‘You, Me & Tuscany’ Review: Plenty of Sun but No Real Heat in a Romcom Outing for Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page

Few would stretch as far as calling “Under the Tuscan Sun” a classic, and yet that easy-breezy Diane Lane vehicle from 2003 has an enduring cultural presence of sorts: It still pops up with some regularity on TV schedules and in-flight menus, and in those more quaintly dated Airbnb rentals where hosts provide a half-dozen inoffensive DVDs for your potential viewing pleasure. Why would it not? It was as pretty and palatable as Hollywood wish-fulfillment gets, and fueled several million vacation fantasies, or fantasy vacations for the lucky. More than two decades later, “You, Me & Tuscany” is well aware of its quietly long shadow. “I’ll be your Diane Lane if you can get me under this Tuscan sun,” says a passing character in this romantic comedy from the Will Packer production line — a clunky reference that at least makes perfectly clear the new film’s modest aspirations.

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Or not so modest, it turns out. For at nearly every turn, this duly sun-soaked but canned-feeling exercise serves to illustrate just how hard it is to pull off an airy bauble like “Under the Tuscan Sun” or “While You Were Sleeping” — to name only the two turn-of-the-century touchstones most flagrantly knocked off in Ryan Engle’s patchwork script. The similarities are largely confined to plot points; in most other respects, with its listless writing, gauche brand placement and stock-footage aesthetic, “You, Me & Tuscany” more closely resembles the direct-to-streaming fodder that has come to define the modern romcom since major studios largely shrugged the genre off. Universal may be giving it a wide theatrical release this weekend, but director Kat Coiro‘s film plays as if designed and cued by algorithm.

How it fares may be a test of how interested audiences are in seeing singer-turned-actor Halle Bailey in a wholly non-musical role — notwithstanding some brief crooning of Mario’s Noughties R&B smash “Let Me Love You” for further nostalgia-farming — or “Bridgerton” star Regé-Jean Page on more contemporary dreamboat duty. Both are attractive, appealing performers, though neither colors outside the faint lines of the script with regard to their characters, each of which is burdened with more backstory than personality. Together, meanwhile, their chemistry never really rises above the cordial: The film may be bound to a PG-13 sexlessness, but there’s nary a winking hint here of sweatier off-screen possibilities.

Single New Yorker Anna (Bailey) is introduced as something of a hot mess, though you wouldn’t know it from Bailey’s squeaky-clean screen presence and perma-radiant presentation. Since her mother’s death sent her into a tailspin that ended her culinary school studies, she’s worked as a professional housesitter, eager to try on the lifestyles of her wealthy employees. After being fired by the latest of these (Nia Vardalos in a thankless cameo), Anna falls first on the mercy of her exasperated best friend, high-end hotel receptionist Claire (Aziza Scott), and then into the arms of flashy Italian hotel guest Matteo (Lorenzo de Moor). It’s just a one-night stand, but Matteo’s tales of idyllic life in his native Tuscany spark a rash decision: With the last of her savings, Anna buys a plane ticket to Italy, in ill-planned pursuit of la bella vita.

This turns out to be one of Anna’s more rational decisions, in the grand scheme of things. Upon arriving in Tuscany with no accommodation booked, she conveniently recalls the address of Matteo’s conveniently unoccupied luxury villa there, and breaks in with convenient ease. When her presence is discovered by Matteo’s conveniently estranged family, they are conveniently quick to believe her claim to be the prodigal son’s fiancée, and she’s immediately embraced as one of their own. No Italian stereotype is left unturned in this portrait of a garrulous, squabbling, intermittently randy clan with pure marinara sauce running through their collective veins; Michael (Page), Matteo’s British-born adopted brother, is a generously two-dimensional outlier by comparison.

Meeting cute in a local deli with a tussle over the last truffled prosciutto sandwich (“foodie” being the closest thing our heroine has to a distinctive character trait), Anna and Michael take an instant if superficial dislike to each other, and anyone who’s seen a movie before can join the dots from there. Predictability is a pleasure in the very best of romcoms, after all, though “You, Me & Tuscany” works toward its inevitable conclusion with a trudging, pro-forma sense of obligation. If the stakes never seem particularly high, that’s because the feelings never run particularly deep. Any dramatic obstacles are haphazardly placed and quickly surmounted, while any potential for outright farce is defused as quickly as it arises: The tone may be consistently lightweight, but actual laughs are scarce.

Even the Tuscan scenery — the clearest can’t-miss asset here, you might think — is indifferently shot and unimaginatively deployed by Coiro (“Marry Me”) and DP Danny Ruhlmann, rarely serving as more than a bright screensaver-style backdrop to rote dialogue scenes. (Indeed, intentionally or otherwise, most compositions here could be vertically cropped with relative ease.) “You, Me & Tuscany” passes the time painlessly enough, but it’s never quite the escape it wants to be: It’s packaged so familiarly and so cautiously, we hardly believe its celebration of free, restlessly wandering impulse.