Movies You Don't Need to See Before You Go to Italy

We thought it would be fun to see if there were some "Italy-themed" movies we could watch before we left for our trip.  I Googled it up and came up with a list from About.com that seemed to fit our needs perfectly titled "Best films to get you in the mood for an Italian vacation".  Armed with a list of 13 movies, we headed to Blockbuster, only to find one of the thirteen in stock - "Italian for Beginners."  Then we scoured the international shelves for other Italy type movies.  We came home with "Il Divo" and "When in Rome" (newer movies that weren't on the list) in addition to "Italian for Beginners."

Our recommendation - don't bother with "Italian for Beginners."  First off, it was Danish with English subtitles, and only had a few scenes in Italy in the last 10 minutes of the movie.  It looked like it was shot on video, was terribly edited, had no musical soundtrack and their titles consisted of someone throwing handwritten cards down at the end of the movie.  Who thought this was a good movie??????

We should have rented "Under the Tuscan Sun" or even "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (which was on the list but not available).  "Il Divo" was touted as being Nixon meets "The Godfather".  It was pretty artsy, and not as thrilling, but it was interesting.  "When in Rome" didn't have a lot of scenes in Italy either, but it was a light comedy, and not too bad.

The list had some of the tried and true movies that you'd expect, like "Cinema Paradiso" and "Roman Holiday", but you'd better plan ahead and order these from Netflix if you want to see these before your next vacation to Italy.