I Don’t Understand You

Directed by David Joseph Craig and Brian Crano, I Don’t Understand You follows a couple (Nick Kroll’s Dom and Andrew Rannells’ Cole) as they travel to Italy for their anniversary and subsequently find themselves caught up in a violent scenario. There’s ultimately little doubt that I Don’t Understand You fares best in its pleasant, compulsively watchable opening stretch, as the movie does, at the outset, come off as an agreeable endeavor focused on a pair of thoroughly affable and agreeable central characters – with the engaging atmosphere heightened by the superb (and completely charismatic) efforts of both Kroll and Rannells. (Their palpable chemistry together doesn’t hurt, either.) It’s disappointing to note, then, that I Don’t Understand You begins its slow-but-steady descent into irrelevance as it progresses into a thriller-forward second half, as Craig and Crano, armed with their own screenplay, infuse this portion of the proceedings with an increasingly broad sensibility that becomes more and more intolerable (ie Dom and Cole’s blase response to horrific happenings is unconvincing, to say the least) – which, when coupled with a decidedly lackluster finale, confirms the picture’s place as a palpable misfire that doesn’t, particularly in its third act, work in the slightest.

** out of ****