Well, it is pride month, and as I move through the month I do hope to review some films with pride. A lot of LGBTQ cinema doesn’t have audio description, because it seems to fall off the mainstream radar. Of course, LGBTQ and Blind is a thing, and we should have access to a wider range of titles too. This Friday, Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells play for laughs (mostly) as a couple that is excited about impending fatherhood, and decide to take a trip to Italy. Like most Americans who travel abroad, they don’t know the language, and are too reliant upon creature comforts and technology.

So the title is perfect, and it satirizes what is often lost in so many of our films where someone heads to Europe to find themselves. This is a more realistic portrayal of going into someone else’s world and they don’t have to know your language. You are in their world.

I didn’t get audio description for this, but I’d be curious to see what it does. The whole film hinges on these guys being perpetually lost in translation, so I would be fine with a track that didn’t dub the Italian, because it may not even be subtitled for a sighted audience. The stronger creative choice is to not tell us what is being said, so we can react along with the guys. However, we would still need audio description to give us those reactions, and the context of where our couple is as the story tries to get them back to the real world.

Kroll and Rannells as predictably good together, having worked together previously. However, I think this has potential, it just doesn’t work enough.

It might very well have audio description in theatres or VOD. And I may catch up with it as a result. For now, I wouldn’t recommend it to a blind/low vision person. I also wouldn’t definitively say thumbs up or down. I lean positive, but I wasn’t so excited for his.

Final Jo

Final Grade: No Grade Due T