‘The Love Scam’ (2025) Netflix Movie Review - A Dull Romantic Comedy

I will take the help of IMDb to describe the plot of Umberto Riccioni Carteni's The Love Scam (aka, Mica è Colpa Mia): Drowning in debt, two brothers concoct a plan to scam a wealthy heiress and save their home in Naples - but unexpected love soon complicates the scheme. What is this scam exactly? Antenello (Vincenzo Nemolato) asks Vito (Antonio Folletto) to make Marina (Laura Adriani) fall in love with him. Vito's name is changed to Carlo, and he poses as an NGO worker or something who serves poor people by feeding them food and raising money for charity. We all have watched enough films to know what will happen between Marina and Vito. He actually ends up falling in love with her, and she, too, after some resistance, gradually warms up to him. This means the movie will reach a point where Vito will regret playing the game of manipulation and consider revealing the truth to Marina - the love of his life. Of course, you are capable enough to predict what will happen after this, so I won't go into the spoiler territory, even though there is nothing spoiler-y about this movie. There are no surprises in The Love Scam, right from the opening scene to the final scene.

In such a situation, the focus should be put on the execution. How has Carteni handled the material? He doesn't show much feeling; he pushes the film forward with a lot of speed. As a result, some scenes end abruptly. When Vito "gets stuck" in an elevator with Marina, she starts freaking out, gets a panic attack, and chokes Vito when he doesn't stop chattering. The scene never arrives at a climax. It's just cut off in the middle. Similarly, the spaghetti cooking scene is concluded prematurely. Carteni's lack of patience can be attributed to his knowledge of working with an overly familiar story. We are always three steps ahead of the characters in the film, so by increasing the pace, Carteni wants to catch up to us or reach the finish line before we can guess the ending. He fails, obviously. No amount of cute baby shots manages to distract us from The Love Scam's insipidity.

I can't say that the jokes fall flat because they are not even allowed to land. The Love Scam is in a hurry - it doesn't care about what it's doing. Among the actors, Adriani fares better than the rest of the cast. She commits to the role sincerely, but alas, she only tries to infuse energy into a body beyond saving. There is no sexual or romantic spark between Marina and Vito. Their "almost about to kiss" moment is devoid of heat. It's good then that we have Napoleon, the baby. His cute face helps us sit through this dull romantic comedy.

Final Score- [2/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times