Stream It Or Skip It?

I Don’t Understand You (now streaming on Hulu) attempts to weld culture-clash comedy to a gaycation to an adoption drama to a bloody horror-thriller, in pursuit of satirical farce (farcical satire?), and the results are a bit, well, whiplashy. Maybe that goes without saying. Sketch-comedy guy Nick Kroll and Broadway/The Book of Mormon star Andrew Rannells play gay partners whose Italian vacation goes haywire, putting their attempt to adopt a child back in the States at risk. Real-life couple David Joseph Craig and Brian Crano direct and write, likely drew inspiration from their own lives in their depiction of a long-term couple dealing with, shall we say, some adversity – although one hopes the more stabby-killy parts are fictional. 

The Gist: It’s gotta be awkward making a video in which you and your partner sell yourselves as prospective adoptive parents. You’re sharing intimate bits of yourselves, your hopes and dreams and loves and all that, to a mother who’s making what’s likely the most difficult decision of her life. Dom (Kroll) and Cole (Rannells) stumble their way through it, in an amusing fashion, not unlike people who know the ins and outs of improv – fancy that! – but their true selves and best intentions do shine through. It’s been a rough go for these two. An earlier attempt to adopt went bust, which explains why there’s a bunch of baby stuff in their home already, reminding them of the heartbreaking ordeal. 

You can sense some of the stress between them, which makes this vacay to Italy an ideal opportunity to reconnect. It’s their 10th anniversary, and hopefully it’ll serve as their last hurrah as no-kid-having people before they’re up to their necks in diapers and all that. They land in Misunderstanding City, where a handful of Duolingo lessons are as helpful as a quarter-dozen pushups in preparation for benchpressing a hippo. The hotel manager arranges the honeymoon suite for them, and gets flustered when they can’t adequately communicate that it’s OK because they’re gay. Dom tries to speak Italian while telling a waiter that Cole is vegetarian, and the subtitles read, “Animals do not eat he, any, or him at all.” Effing tourists, right? But they seem to be enjoying themselves as they banter and bicker and share a romantic moment or two in front of beautiful scenery. Then they get a call from Candice (Amanda Seyfried!), who shares THE BEST news: She loved their video, and the baby she’s carrying will soon be theirs. Joy!

That night, as they drive their rental car down strange rural roads in the dark of night, searching for a farmhouse restaurant, you wonder if anything can sour their mood. How about getting lost? And stuck in the mud? In a rainstorm? With no cell service? And getting “help” from a grumpy ol’ local coot who isn’t fond of trespassers and of course doesn’t speak English? Things elevate. It’s tense. When they finally get to the restaurant, run by an ancient sweetheart of a woman who’s accepting her first reservation in years, things are sort of looking up, although they’re served pizza with horsemeat on it, and Cole is a vegetarian, and they can’t understand a word of what she’s saying. A little horse sausage (phrasing!) is the least of their concerns once the bodies start hitting the hardwood, though.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I Don’t Understand You is Bros crossed with The Talented Mr. Ripley as directed by a defanged Coen Bros.

Performance Worth Watching: There’s real chemistry between Kroll and Rannells, although the movie tends to not emphasize that strength as it loses thematic focus.

Memorable Dialogue: Dom resuscitates a dying man:

Cole: You saved him!

Dom: But you killed him first!

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: One of the bits of life experience I’ve shared with nervous prospective parents: All the stuff that stressed you out before you had a kid – the leaky roof, a holiday with the in-laws, the Finlayson account at work, etc. – really doesn’t get to you once you’re tasked with keeping a tiny helpless wad of wailing fat, mucus and soft bone alive. Being a parent rewires your brain. Pre-parental anxiety is real, and understandable, and if I Don’t Understand You functions under one umbrella idea – admittedly a stretch, considering the range of its weird, scattered ambition – it’s that all the insane shit that happens to Dom and Cole is a test of their mettle as dads-to-be, of their ability to work together to solve difficult problems and maybe make the best of untenable situations. I mean, if they can survive a night-long crucible of mayhem in which several innocent people die by their hands, mostly accidentally but almost kind of on purpose, getting up at 3:47 a.m. for a bottle and a fresh nappy will be a breeze. 

Much of what happens can be blamed on the language barrier, which these two overtly but somewhat unwittingly entitled Americans aren’t particularly concerned with navigating. There’s the least they could do, and they do a little bit less than that. Hence the title of the movie, which is sort of about Dom and Cole working their way through Italy like Baby Huey testing out sofas. It’s also sort of about Kroll and Rannells shaping these characters as plausible, lived-in, longtime partners who quibble and inside-joke and just-plain-understand each other inside and out after a decade. But don’t try to apply the title of the movie to their relationship, because it fits like a glove on a hoof. 

Which is to say I Don’t Understand You doesn’t seem to know what it wants to say, or how to say it. And that line of reasoning leads us to the film’s apparent bottom-line goal, namely, to make us laugh. It does, sporadically – I enjoyed one out-loud-er, a few chuckles and a few more amused smirkings. Is that enough? I dunno. It’s right on the line. It may depend on whether you appreciate the movie’s deviation into black comedy, although Crano and Craig seem unwilling to really embrace the bleak and give us something memorable. Running jokes about an elderly woman’s brittle bones and the reframing of homophobia as being more repulsive than murder exemplify the movie’s inability to settle on a tone. It doesn’t seem like a throw-it-all-at-the-wall-and-see-if-it-sticks comedy, but the more you think about it, the less functional it gets.

Our Call: A handful of funny lines and inspired performances by its two leads might endear the movie to you, but I Don’t Understand You’s inability to focus on a singular goal tips it into SKIP IT territory for me.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.