This oddball hybrid of movie is part documentary and part fictional comedy that tries desperately hard to milk ever ounce of humor in an awkward parody of online dating. The central figure in the Lonely Italian is Domenico Nesci an Italian TV & Radio host who also once starred in two MTV Reality Shows “That’s Amore” and “A Shot At Love with Tila Tequila“. He now lives in L.A. and the premise of the plot is that as he has unable to find a steady girlfriend, he will now give all the online relationship/dating sites a try.
He starts out with a burst of manic energy that he manages to maintain for the whole 83 minutes as he seeks the advice of ‘dating experts’ whose advice was always so droll, it was difficult to ascertain in they were the real McCoy or just actors. However that didn’t seem important either way as what was consistent with them all was their rather artless conversations which fell completely flat.
The writers ensured that the ‘dates’ that the lovelorn Domenico fixed himself up from the myriad of sites he now had his profile on, covered the whole spectrum of single women from desperate to dangerous, and merely a foil for him to mine for as much cheap comic hilarity he could possible squeeze out. I’m really not sure who was more embarrassed the girls taking part, or us squeamishly watching in our seats.
The movie is the feature directing debut of Lee Farber who also co-wrote it with Nesci, and both of them have obviously been influenced by the Borat movies, but sadly neither of them have the talent of Sacha Baron Cohen.
Based on this movie the Lonely Italian is going to be lonely for a very long time.
