Little Italy is cheesier than all the pizza in the world. It tries desperately to be a modern day Romeo and Juliet story but fails to add interesting conflict or stakes. It is incredibly dull and low-energy.
The acting is typical of a romantIc comedy, failing to be relatable or charming, and worst yet funny. Rather than have characters react realistically, they wait for a couple of seconds for the camera to focus on them to delivery their dumb one-liner response. The movie feels the need to show you the same moment over and over with each character in the scene getting their chance at dropping a dumb one-liner. It's a shame, since I don't think Hayden Christensen is a terrible actor, but unfortunately his long hiatus from film is ended by a bottom-tier romantic comedy. There isn't much chemistry between the two leads, as it basically equates to PG *. There is barely any depth to any of the characters due to a lack of struggle or calls to action, and they just meander and execute simple jokes and the occasional gag from time to time.
The music is rather awful, as the pop songs really contradict the more traditional Italian tunes throughout. The modern pop songs are some of the least romantic pieces of music that have ever been written and seen like a desperate attempt at pulling in teenage girls into this film that will probably be way too boring for them anyways. The sound design as a whole is pretty bad as their idea of adding energy is to just fade the volume of the music so it gets louder and louder as the scenes go on.
Despite being a movie boasting Italian culture, there is a huge lack of it here. There are many beautiful vistas in Italy, but we spend the vast majority of the film's time trapped in unromantic cramped spaces like kitchens and restaurants rather than landmarks.
This movie is funny - Not! It has stupid jokes that counter the way reality works. One of the most annoying tropes in dumb comedies is that of marijuana turning people into party animals. Pot is snuck into pizza sauce which leads to rambunctious grandma's dancing and getting frisky rather than just taking a nap. There are also several incredibly lazy jokes at the expense of an Indian character that equate to references to popular culture that dumb-dumbs would understand, like calling him Pizzadog Millionaire or something along those lines, or having him make a joke about an Indian woman's mom being a sacred 'cow' as an insult, and making bizarre innuendos in an exaggerated accent. There's also other standout unfunny jokes such as an art old man saying "Ow, my *!" rather than angina, which is a heart condition. There are a grand total of zero clever jokes throughout the whole film.
There's some random social commentary thrown in the absence of character rather than adding personality to a character. Out of nowhere a character drops a sob story about how they got kicked out by their dad after coming out as a homosexual towards the end of the movie, and it's essentially a throwaway piece of dialogue that doesn't really amount to anything in the little grand scheme of things.
Little Italy is a lame romantic comedy that isn't funny or charming and has nothing of interest to offer anyone but the least demanding of moviegoers. It almost feels like the theaters are where you go for films that are too bad, even for Netflix. If you're really desperate for some Romeo and Juliet, you'd be better off seeing them in Sherlock Gnomes. This film's more mind numbing than drinking a gallon of absinthe.
