Review: ‘You, Me & Tuscany’ is a charming throwback to 2000s rom-coms
2026 / Dir. Kat Coiro
Rating: 3.5/5
Watch if you like: Italian tourism videos full of comically attractive people eating pasta and drinking Aperol Spritzes that distract you from your overpriced white box that your landlord calls an apartment.
As movie theater chain scholar Nicole Kidman says, “We come to this place… for magic. We come to AMC theaters to laugh, to cry, to care.” Cinema can help us understand other cultures, question our humanity and role in the universe, and, most importantly, be an escape from our reality. For me, seeing hot people fall in love in Italy in the lightly remixed romantic comedy You, Me & Tuscany was a pretty delightful way to ignore the horrors of America 2026 outside the theater walls.
You, Me & Tuscany stars Halle Bailey (The Little Mermaid, The Color Purple) as Anna, a young NYC woman who had to drop out of culinary school and put her life on hold to care for her late mother. Her escape from life stasis has been as a house sitter for rich people, but that’s come to an end after her latest client (Nia Vardalos, in a nod to how indebted this film is to My Big Fat Greek Wedding) catches her wearing her clothes. She finds solace at the hotel her friend Claire (a very funny Aziza Scott, who doesn’t get a lot of screen time but provides voice memo commentary throughout the film) works at and takes a seat at the bar, having an almost meet-cute with a too-jetlagged Matteo (Lorenzo de Moor). Before he passes out, he encourages her to visit the small Italian town he’s fled from after not wanting to take over his father’s restaurant.
Not having anything else going on, she flies to Italy with her meager savings, only to find that Matteo’s hometown is in the midst of their summer festival and there’s no vacancy at any hotel. What’s a girl to do but break into Matteo’s empty luxury villa, try on a diamond engagement ring she finds in the junk drawer, and pretend to be Matteo’s fiancée when his mother, Gabriella (Paolo Sorrentino regular Isabella Ferrari), and his Nonna (Stefania Casini, Suspiria, Blood for Dracula) find her trespassing. In the kind of ridiculous situation that would only ever happen in a romantic comedy, Anna finds that Matteo’s family is so head-over-heels with the idea of planning a “big fat Italian wedding” that they all form a surprisingly endearing codependent relationship: the family wants to heal, and Anna wants a family, plus their adopted son, Michael (Regé-Jean Page, Bridgerton), is a hunk with a winery.
You basically know where all this is going, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a fun ride full of quirky characters and beautiful Italian scenery. Bailey and Page have plenty of chemistry, and I appreciated how the film made space to acknowledge that they’re the only black people in this rural Italian town, using some of its humor to do so. For instance, a potential early romantic moment where the sprinklers come on while they’re at Michael’s winery has to be averted because Anna can’t get her edges wet without anyone who understands what to do with black hair in the area. There are a couple of other subtle twists on the formula, and writer Ryan Engle wisely breezes through some of the genre’s stereotypical moments.
There’s also some unintentional hilarity through the frequent Italian product placement, like when Matteo’s dad serves the family Aperol Spritzes in branded Aperol glasses that they all lovingly enjoy. The most ridiculous is a scene towards the end where Anna borrows Matteo’s Maserati and the film becomes a literal car commercial, cutting between the various features and details of the Italian sports car as it drives fast down a dirt road. I wouldn’t be surprised if You, Me & Tuscany was funded entirely by the Italian tourism board, but at the very least it made me want to go home and cook some pasta.
While You, Me & Tuscany may not be breaking a ton of new ground, we don’t get a lot of romantic comedies like this anymore that are big-hearted, escapist cinematic fantasies. I’m not really a fan of the genre, but I had a fun time, and it made for a perfect date-night movie. You shouldn’t have ice cream for every dinner, but once in a while, it hits the spot.