Marriage is one of the most sacred institutions known to us, and even those who may not believe in it cannot deny its importance as a cultural artefact, even if its symbolic meaning far overtakes its practicality. However, we often find that the term “till death us do part” has lost a lot of its significance, based on the sheer number of people who decide to end their marriages after some time, proving these vows (while meaningful in the moment) were far from ironclad. However, what happens when someone breaks the relationship off even before these words can be said? This is something that we find being explored in Solo Mio, the film written and directed by the Kinnane Brothers (a collective of eight siblings, although only a couple of them – namely Chuck Kinnane and Dan Kinnane – are credited as the official directors), in which they examine what happens when someone is left at the altar. The film follows Matt Taylor, a well-liked art teacher who is about to marry his longtime sweetheart, but while awaiting for her arrival down the aisle, Matt is shocked to find that she has decided against it at the last moment, choosing instead to break off the wedding and instead pursue her own path, cutting ties with the man she still claims to love, but not to the extent that she’s willing to dedicate her life to him. Discovering that he won’t be able to get a refund on the extensive honeymoon package that he paid for, Matt decides to turn it into a solo holiday for himself – and it helps that they chose Italy, where they had hoped to spend the first few weeks as newlyweds, but which Matt now has to navigate almost entirely by himself, meeting a few eccentric characters along the way who show him that there is always a path towards recovery. A film as twee and inconsequential in practice as it sounds, Solo Mio is a peculiar film, the rare kind of romantic comedy that is neither funny nor driven by romance, instead being a misguided bundle of scenes that don’t come together to form anything particularly meaningful, and ultimately ends up being a muddled, heavy-handed mess of a film that never amounts ot anything even vaguely memorable, let alone interesting, failing to meet even the most basic criteria for success.

There exists a genre that has not entirely gone extinct, but has certainly waned in popularity, which are the mindless comedies about Americans travelling to exotic locations, usually alone, and engaging in the act of embracing a new culture and finding themselves along the way. This approach, which we can refer to as the act of fetishising other cultures (as brutal as that may be to say) has been responsible for films that set their sights on the low-hanging fruit, and are content to just go for the obvious narrative techniques, despite having much more potential. Detaching the criticisms we have about the film (which we’ll discuss momentarily), and focusing instead on how these ideas are brought to life, we can at least understand the appeal. The idea of setting off to another country is undeniably exciting – unearthing yourself from the humdrum banality of everyday life, even momentarily, can instil a sense of excitement and curiosity in those willing to embrace the unknown that emerges when exploring an entirely new country and its people. There’s very few countries that have remained untouched when it comes to exploring the idea of outsiders deciding to make it their home for a short while. These are attractive stories, since it satisfies our own innate curiosity (to the point where many of these films are written in such a way that it feels like we’re accompanying the protagonist on their journey, as a silent companion) and gives us the chance to experience the wanderlust that has been proven to be a near-universal experience. The decision to set the film in Rome, one of the most photographed cities in the world, is one of the many very obvious choices, but it’s one that we can at least understand, since it allows the film to contrast American and Italian culture, which is a very easy concept, but one that has proven to be effective in the past. None of this is intended to praise Solo Mio, since it’s all extremely obvious, but we can at least give the film credit as far as acknowledging that it knew how to pique our curiosity, despite not doing all that much with it by the end.

From its first moments, we can see where Solo Mio falls apart, since it becomes very clear that this is a film written and directed by eight people, who attempt to function as one copacetic entity, but ultimately proven to be the very definition of the adage of too many cooks spoiling the broth (although we can argue the broth was already putrid before they even turned the stove on), since this is a film that somehow manages to be only 96 minutes in length, but feels thrice as long, moving at a pace that is simultaneously frantic and laboured. Within the first two minutes, the protagonist goes from standing at the altar to being on an aeroplane, with absolutely no context to help us rationalise his choices. A smarter film would have spent some time afterwards unpacking the rapid-fire introduction, but unfortunately, that was not a priority here, since every minute of Solo Mio is overwrought to the point of being actively annoying. It doesn’t help that it is made by people who not only seem to be unable to understand the nuances of the culture they were exploring, but seemingly didn’t even bother to pick up a guide on Italian culture, let alone visiting the country themselves. The extent of the Kinnane Brothers’ knowledge of Italy seems to come from crude social media posts and cartoons, since just about every cliche, even those that are mostly frustrating, emerges at some point in this film. Absolutely every stereotype we can imagine is a part of this script, and the film isn’t even smart in how it presents them, simply cobbling together the most obvious jokes and never bothering to even look beyond them to make some kind of statement. It is a film made by a group of people who seem to have thrown a dart at a map and decided to write a film based on wherever it landed, and this shows in the atrocious writing and complete disregard for cultural nuance. If the film weren’t so evidently filmed on location, I’d even question whether or not the directors knew where Italy was, since we have not seen such an irritating lack of attention to cultural detail in many decades, to the point where it seems to be a compliment to say this film peddled in stereotypes.

We can’t only blame the Kinnane Brothers for the issues with Solo Mio, since this film was also the idea of Kevin James, who, for some reason, was adamant in his desire to play a romantic lead. He’s not an untalented actor (and he’s done some solid work in the past that shows that he has a certain aptitude, even beyond being a comedic presence), but he’s overextending himself far beyond his capabilities here. Unfortunately, he genuinely believes that he is more likeable than he actually is, someone who can demand the benefit of the doubt, and draw audiences in. Unfortunately, we soon come to realise that the viewers who would blindly follow him based on his work on The King of Queens (as well as the many other attempts at replicating that success in subsequent sitcoms) is much thinner than expected, leading him to always be considered the second banana in a long string of mindless broad comedies whose main attraction was always going to be the other notable actors more than him. James does seem like someone who we want to succeed, and his efforts to redefine himself as more than just the second banana to Adam Sandler is admirable – but a low-energy romantic comedy where he’s made out to be this debonair, eternally likable protagonist who blunders his way through interactions with people who simply cannot resist his charms is a bit too much of a tall order, and not even his natural quirks are enough to convince us. It doesn’t help that he’s surrounded by a cast that is not any better – there’s a lot of questionable work being done by Alyson Hannigan, Jonathan Roumie and Kim Coates (the latter delivering the year’s first truly atrocious performance – I can’t tell if he was given no direction, or simply decided to ignore whatever direction he was given), and it doesn’t give us any confidence that this film was in control of what it was trying to achieve, and this isn’t even saying anything on the local Italian actors, who did their best but were mostly left to their own devices for the most part. There’s always been a persistent rumour that Sandler’s tendency to set his films in exotic locations was to give him and his friends the opportunity for a holiday – but at least in those films, we were entertained and the actors put in some effort, none of which is even vaguely applicable in Solo Mio, a film that does very little with the paltry potential it had in the first place.

Solo Mio is a film that has its heart in the right place, but ultimately falls short in most places. It’s a decently-made film, and it will certainly be entertaining enough for those who have an affection for this kind of low-stakes romantic comedy in which nothing of consequence happens. It focuses too much on the kind of simplistic values that have become hopelessly outdated (I’m not one to put too much stock into the principles guiding the people making art, but the fact that this film was produced and distributed by a studio that has been aligned with intensely conservative views does lend some credence to the idea that it is focused on highlighting themes that are a bit too focused on old-fashioned values), both thematically and artistically. It never amounts to anything, and we don’t even have the benefit of it being a short film, since, despite its reasonable length, it moves at such a strange pace, with the tone being so scattered that we spend most of the film trying to understand what we are supposed to be feeling at any given point. As a whole, Solo Mio is a pretty dismal film, and despite trying to be a likable, upbeat romantic comedy that shows the importance of self-love, and how we can often find ourselves in moments where life seems the most challenging, the film is a mostly unappealing, heavy-handed mess that doesn’t contain a single coherent point, feels like it was made by people who had barely even heard of Italy before writing the film, and which struggles to put in even the most basic amount of effort, choosing to aim for the most obvious subject matter, and never attempting to be anything even vaguely challenging. It doesn’t do anything we haven’t seen before, and actually seems quite regressive, becoming one of the year’s most plain and unconvincing films, and one that doesn’t even manage to make the most of its stunning locations and the inherent promise offered by a subject that may not have been original, but at least could have been better than this grotesque mess of a film.