I’m not entirely sure what about Solo Mio makes it a faith-based film, but Angel Studios has backed the Kevin James Italian romp for whatever reason. Regardless of who is backing it, though, I’m glad it got made, because Kevin James rarely gets decent material to work with. A lot of his films, especially the Happy Madison productions, consistently use him as a punchline. James is rarely asked to emote or play an actual human being. He’s almost always either the joke, in on the joke or the butt of the joke, sometimes all three at once. Solo Mio gives him something much more relatable to play, and the result is easily one of the more respectable movies James has been allowed to carry.

James plays a teacher who is madly in love with a young woman named Heather. The two have agreed to get married and planned a destination wedding in Italy, only for poor Kevin to get left at the altar. He stands there waiting for Heather to join him, eventually realizes she isn’t coming and finds a letter she left behind. Considering the emphasis the movie puts on this letter, as though Heather had spent the previous night pouring every ounce of emotional strife into some devastating piece of literature, what she actually wrote is so incredibly basic that it’s laughable. Kevin accepts it as good enough because he seems like a nice guy, but I had considerably more questions.

This was a destination wedding. Who are all these people in the church? Did they fly all the way to Italy for this? Does Kevin not have to talk to his parents, her parents, brothers, sisters, friends or anybody else who presumably spent a small fortune traveling to another continent to watch these two get married? There’s basically no fallout. Heather disappears, Kevin goes back to the hotel and he’s stuck living out the honeymoon by himself because it’s non-refundable. Of course it is. I could never get over how spectacularly inconsiderate this whole thing was on Heather’s part. The movie wants there to be this lingering question of whether she might change her mind and come back, and all I could think was, why would you want her to? He’s a teacher. He did all this on a teacher’s salary. Destination weddings are not inexpensive, and the poor man flew to another continent to make this grand romantic gesture for her while she presumably left an entire church full of people wondering why they had just crossed an ocean.

So I immediately did not like Heather, nor did I want her to return. I was hoping Kevin James would find himself a nice Italian girl and settle down, and that is basically the movie. He ends up taking the honeymoon tour by himself, surrounded by couples and a collection of recognizable actors, including Alyson Hannigan and Kim Coates. Everything is kept extremely family-friendly. It’s clean, it’s PG, and it’s kind of amazing what they manage to do with comedy while allowing James to be the straight man instead of a bumbling idiot who falls down the stairs or crashes into something or does whatever Paul Blart was doing in every single movie. Solo Mio treats James with a level of dignity his movies rarely afford him, and hopefully it signals some kind of change in his career.

I was actually offered the opportunity to screen Solo Mio in advance through Angel Studios, who, ironically, have not asked me to screen anything since I said no. I didn’t want to be constrained by a non-disclosure agreement, particularly one that contractually prohibited me from discussing certain aspects of the film. One of those restrictions caught my attention immediately as a blind film critic because I was apparently not supposed to discuss the presence of Andrea Bocelli in the movie. We simply do not have that many famous blind people in the world, so I wasn’t going to sign an agreement telling me I couldn’t talk about one of them appearing in a movie I was supposed to review.

Without having seen Solo Mio, I had no context for what Bocelli was doing in the film. He could have had a giant part. He could have had a tiny part. He could have walked up and punched Kevin James in the face. I had no idea. There was no context given to me as to what he actually did in the movie, so I passed, walked away and figured I would get to Solo Mio when I got to it. Of the three things Angel Studios didn’t want me to mention, of course I’m mentioning Andrea Bocelli. One of the other restrictions I still don’t really understand, but fine, I won’t mention that thing. The third was definitely a spoiler, and I wouldn’t bring it up because I’m not an asshole. But Andrea Bocelli being in this movie is simply not that big of a deal and might even be a drawing factor for certain people. So there you go. He’s here, he’s blind, and for all we know, he might be the only blind actor in a feature this year.

Bocelli actually gets to do a little bit of acting. I wouldn’t call it a substantial role by any means, and he certainly isn’t a co-lead, but he has some scenes, including one with Kevin James. We even get to hear James sing some opera, and of course it’s Nessun Dorma because apparently that is the only aria anyone making a movie has ever heard of. Nessun Dorma is the pumpkin spice latte of arias. It’s fine. It’s popular for a reason. But it also feels like the kind of selection somebody who doesn’t really know opera would choose. I’m actually sort of surprised Andrea Bocelli didn’t suggest something himself, considering he has a much deeper bench of songs to sing from. But alas, nobody asked me.

One of the things I really enjoyed about Solo Mio, and one of the reasons the movie survives all the inherently stupid Heather stuff and the aspects of the wedding it never bothers to address, is that we do eventually meet the fiery Italian woman who might capture Kevin James’s heart. The actress playing her is lovely. I thought she was great, she adds a lot to the film and she has some genuinely good chemistry with James. The movie also gives her a life outside of simply being the Italian woman waiting around for the sad American tourist to notice her. She has her own story involving the cafe she runs, remaining in the same space and fighting with her landlord, and then in walks Kevin James. She truly made the movie better, and the chemistry between them gives Solo Mio the warmth it needs to work.

As for accessibility, Solo Mio does have audio description if you can find it. You just have to work for it. Angel Studios has a frustrating history of doing a rather poor job translating accessibility from a theatrical release downstream to premium video on demand and streaming platforms, including its own platform, which remains surprisingly light on audio description outside of The Chosen. The track exists for Solo Mio, but depending on where and how you watch the movie, you may have to go hunting for it. It is definitely worth checking the options available in your particular corner of the streaming wilderness before renting or purchasing the film.

I don’t say this enough about Kevin James’s work, but Solo Mio is worth your time. It’s entertaining enough to watch Kevin James eat, pray, love his way across parts of Italy, and while the movie is predictable and I’m still not entirely sure why it falls under the Angel Studios banner, I’m glad somebody took the time to give meaningful work to Kevin James. He is so rarely asked to emote beyond a certain point, and Solo Mio lets him be warm, likable, wounded and romantic without requiring him to be humiliated every five minutes for our amusement. That shouldn’t feel revolutionary, but considering the movies Kevin James has spent much of his career making,it somehow is.

Fresh: 7.5/10