Oh, Ramona!

Stylishly made, and occasionally enjoyable. HOWEVER, in 2019 we shouldn't have a reliance on fat shaming for humour, and being guilty of this, the film is ultimately offensive and puerile, and worthy of being blacklisted.

Maybe they just do things differently in Romania. For a modern American audience, this weirdly terrible film - cleverly staged, smartly shot, put together with care and skill, and drowning in despicable clichés and wretched loathing - seems like a terrible miscalculation. The cast is worthy of a better project, many of the visuals are wonderful, and yet it's a cruel, dishonest, fat-shaming, gay-shaming, difference-hating, trampling mess of "No ha ha it's just a joke we don't mean it" moments that do not persuade. Are we meant to understand that we all live in the gutter, so this talk of stars is just delusion? Honestly, I don't care. I'm willing to believe that this makes a lot more sense in a different culture, but while it wanders through mine - Netflix releases it in English only - it fails hard. It's a sex comedy with no sex and a love story without sympathy, empathy, or honesty. In an early scene an earnestly-romantic kid has his love fantasy derailed by a giant turd in a public toilet. That's the whole experience of this movie, in a ... well, in a nutshell, if you know what I mean.