It’s widely known that there’s a lot of skill required in the art of screenwriting. One of the keystones of that art is in writing good exposition, and the old adage of ‘show don’t tell’ can clearly mark out a great script from a poor or a mediocre one. It’s quite a feat then that in Netflix’s latest cosy romantic comedy, La Dolce Villa, the film throws this entirely out of the window and spends the first ten minutes having characters bluntly telling each other things that they each already know, purely for the sake of the audience.

If you watch films like this, or similar movies such as the Scotland-based A Castle For Christmas, then you know fully what you’re getting into here. La Dolce Villa is aimed firmly at a middle-aged, cosy romance-seeking audience who want an easy story with little conflict, no real stakes, lots of beautiful scenery and vaguely attractive actors standing around in Italian-looking locations.

It follows the simple tale of fifty-something American widower Eric (Scott Foley), who has flown to Italy to try and convince his backpacking daughter, Liv (Maia Reficco) not to buy into a One-Euro Home scheme. But as Liv has fallen in love with the tiny provincial town of Montezara and with the help of the attractive widow Mayor Francesca (Violante Placido), the pair manage to convince Eric to help renovate an aging villa back to its former majesty. Meanwhile, romance is brewing between Liv and a local lad, while the Tuscan sun also seems to be bringing both Eric and Francesca out of their grieving dwams.

There’s never a lick of doubt as to how any of this will wrap up, although credit where it’s due to the film for at least tossing a semblance of an obstacle into the home stretch of things. It’s exactly what you would expect from a Netflix rom-com. Chewing gum for the eyes and mind, and fairly harmless for all that. 

The problem with La Dolce Villa is that while there’s nothing terribly wrong with the film, there’s also absolutely nothing exceptional about it. The script by Elizabeth Hackett and Hilary Galanoy is functional and formulaic at best, the acting is passable, and the direction and general look and feel is flat and uninteresting. No mean feat as the film was filmed on location in and around Tuscany, and it’s quite hard to make the rolling hills and Cypress trees look uninspiring. Yet it manages it.

What is more surprising is this coming from the stable of director Mark Waters, serving to remind us that his heyday of churning out films like Mean Girls, Freaky Friday and Spiderwick Chronicles was now twenty-odd years ago.

All in all, it’s a film your maiden aunt or your gran will probably enjoy and have forgotten in a week’s time. It’s inoffensive and gentle, but it’s also really difficult not to look at a film like this as anything other than the quick cash grab, workmanlike effort of a lot of people who invested no more time, effort or emotion into it than was absolutely necessary.

Available to Stream on Netflix Now