Product: Under the Tuscan Sun (2003)
Rating: 3.0
pedestrian middle-aged romance with likable characters
The setting is the star of the cliched and unimaginative film about a recently-divorced woman who buys an Italian villa on a whim (how nice for her!) and finds love and loses love and finds love again. Heck, how are even those of us who've gone through a divorce supposed to relate to this character, who can afford to buy a villa capriciously and fix it up and never worry about money or relatives or other commitments. Aside from those quibbles, the characters are likable but there is no one in this film I would want to spend an evening with, and the situations are hackneyed -- characters who tell her to learn to live again, a snake in the bedroom, irascible characters who thaw toward the end of the film, etc. I strugged to make it through to the end, and itt certainly doesn't make me want to read the book.DVD extras include a commentary track with writer-director Audrey Wells, a 9-minute featurette called "Tuscany 101", and 3 deleted scenes. The film can be heard in English or French and subtitled in English or Spanish -- what, no Italian?!