Kat Graham from The Vampire Diaries and Tom Hopper from The Umbrella Academy are in a Netflix romcom. So Love in the Villa can’t be that bad, can it?
Julie (Kat Graham) is a third grade English teacher from Minneapolis. She books a dream trip to Verona, Italy, setting of her favorite story - Romeo & Juliet, with her boyfriend, Brandon (Raymond Ablack). When Brandon backs out of the trip at the last minute, Julie decides to go alone. After an awful trip, Julie arrives in Verona to find out that her villa has been double booked. With no other option, she has to share the villa with Charlie (Tom Hopper) for the next week.
Love in the Villa is another one of those ‘hate turns into love’ movies. A good portion of the movie consists of Julie and Charlie being absolutely terrible to each other. The argument culminates in a giant food fight where they basically destroy an apartment that neither of them owns. But, for some reason, the two decide to call a truce and spend some time not trying to kill each other.
Of all of the romcoms that I have watched, this one is not the worst. It’s pretty rare to see an amazingly good romcom. This is not one of those. However, it is definitely watchable. Both Graham and Hopper are decent actors and the script is not completely terrible, even though the writer (who is also the director) likes to litter random Italian all over the place. There isn’t a ton of chemistry, just a lot of unexplainable googly eyes when they happen to get their faces too close to each other. We do get a little bit of a third act twist but, honestly, that is probably the worst part of the movie.
Fans of Graham and Hopper will most likely love Villa. Everyone else that wants to watch it should do so with a glass of wine or their phone in hand. Something that will distract them from the bad parts but let them enjoy the good parts.