Item: Love & Gelato
Rating: 6.8
Author: NextFlicks

Lina Emerson is heading to Italy to fulfil her mother's dying wish but can she embrace the adventure or will she return home in Love & Gelato, based on the best-selling novel by Jenna Evans Welch.

Netflix really knows how to pump out the teen romcoms with movies like To All The Boys I've Loved, The Kissing Booth and Little Italy all proving to be huge hits for the streaming platform. So with a winning formula in their back pocket, they have created Love & Gelato.

The story follows Lina Emerson, a seventeen-year-old American girl who heads to the dream city of Rome, Italy to fulfil her mother’s dying wish that she get to know her unknown father.

There's only one small problem. Lina (Susanna Skaggs) is a very serious, methodical and even a little nerdy teenager. And Rome is not only unfamiliar but for Lina is a little chaotic. All she wants to do is go back home.

Then she is given her mother's journal from when she lived in Italy. Suddenly Lina’s uncovering a magical world of secret romances, art, and hidden bakeries.

Like in Jumping From High Places, all of this forces her into dealing with her anxieties and fears. But at least she can do that under Italy's famous sunshine, in a fairy tale landscape with plenty of gelato to get her through the tough times.

With her best friend Addie (Anjelika Washington) beside her, and her godmother happy to break her out of her shell, Lina follows in her mother’s footsteps and unearths a secret that has been kept for far too long.

So can Lina completely change and come to love the city's charms as much as her mother? Will it be the best Summer ever? Find out in Love & Gelato.

Love & Gelato Trailer

Is Love & Gelato Worth Watching?

There is definitely a demographic for this movie. It's probably tween and young teenage girls who love the idea of holiday romances which is sweet.

Based on the best-selling novel from author Jenna Evans Welch, it is a great book to base a feature film on. After all who doesn't love a story about young romance?

However, despite ticking all of the usual boxes, something about Love & Gelato falls flat.

Whereas other movies in the genre hopped off the screen with character chemistry, this is more of a fizzle.

Lina's romantic story and dilemma, to choose between two young men, doesn't have the sparkle to convince you that she is in love with either of them. It's a pg love triangle.

Given the whole point of the film is Love & Gelato you'd think the creators would get at least one of those aspects on point!

Other than the lack of chemistry, the script is forced, the characters are cliched and the girl abroad stories are done better elsewhere.

Written and directed by Brandon Camp, depite it's minor faults, I'm sure it's going to be another hit for Netflix.