A Little Italian Vacation relies on your low expectations, and you should want more. This movie has all of the characteristics of a good comedy: a little Scottish kid who swears like a sailor, cut scenes to raucous nights out that no one can remember, and a really kind Italian hunk. But it also has the characteristics of a lazy comedy: a bunch of flat female characters who serve the role as sexy lamp for the progression of the plot, suicide as plot device, and a lot of casual homophobia and rape threats that are played for laughs. Ultimately, A Little Italian Vacation is snappy enough to draw your attention away from any of the jokes that don’t land and at under 80 minutes, it’s not a huge time investment if you’ve been looking for a straight romcom starring some attractive young people in an attractive little seaside town on the Mediterranean. But it’s hard not to notice that the framing of each arc is always under the male gaze, about the acquisition of the female body, reliance on the woman’s lack of ambition or her willingness to settle. Here are some things that would’ve made the movie better: some scenes where Georgia, Amber Jane, or Claire spoke to each other without the guys around and acknowledged the weirdness of the dating dynamic; any kind of queer romance plot; the girls swatting down the guys’ casual sexism with pop culture references; the absence of an incest plot. Expecting my check in the mail.
