6.9 stars.
Take an overworked Italian-American man with a really great family and he somehow goes through a midlife crisis transformation of some kind and the final rendering is confusing. The theme does not quite come across the way I'd like.
This film has many wonderful ideas and life lessons for those of us who have good fortune and the opportunity to make really bad decisions because we are rich. Obviously this is a wealthy family who throws around money like it's nothing and there are many unanswered questions about how and why they are where they are in life. He is an extremely successful and intelligent man, but the writer doesn't focus enough on his good qualities. The family is fantastic and you can see they have a great relationship with a variety of appealing interactions, yet they don't tap into this aspect enough either. The film is too focused on a confused man interacting with a bunch of poor people who live uninteresting lives somewhere in the countryside in Italy.
The story is pretty basic, a man goes to Italy where he grew up, still speaks Italian fairly well, at least understands it well, speaks it poorly, yet it seems his wife speaks it somewhat, not sure how that worked out. The Italian people he grew up with were fun, but the movie is lopsided. It really makes little sense to be honest. I'm not sure what they intended, maybe they had too much on the plate, maybe this could have been a mini-series, 4 episodes, add some extra drama, maybe a side romance or something, and let us see the wine business come to fruition a bit more...
Take an overworked Italian-American man with a really great family and he somehow goes through a midlife crisis transformation of some kind and the final rendering is confusing. The theme does not quite come across the way I'd like.
This film has many wonderful ideas and life lessons for those of us who have good fortune and the opportunity to make really bad decisions because we are rich. Obviously this is a wealthy family who throws around money like it's nothing and there are many unanswered questions about how and why they are where they are in life. He is an extremely successful and intelligent man, but the writer doesn't focus enough on his good qualities. The family is fantastic and you can see they have a great relationship with a variety of appealing interactions, yet they don't tap into this aspect enough either. The film is too focused on a confused man interacting with a bunch of poor people who live uninteresting lives somewhere in the countryside in Italy.
The story is pretty basic, a man goes to Italy where he grew up, still speaks Italian fairly well, at least understands it well, speaks it poorly, yet it seems his wife speaks it somewhat, not sure how that worked out. The Italian people he grew up with were fun, but the movie is lopsided. It really makes little sense to be honest. I'm not sure what they intended, maybe they had too much on the plate, maybe this could have been a mini-series, 4 episodes, add some extra drama, maybe a side romance or something, and let us see the wine business come to fruition a bit more...