‘I Don’t Understand You’ Review: Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells Make a Winsome Couple in Entertaining Gaycation Comedy

A gay adoption comedy that veers off into travel porn before taking a hard left into dark fish-out-of-water farce, I Don’t Understand You is a lot fresher and more enjoyable than its generic title might suggest. That’s largely because Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells make such an effortlessly funny and convincing couple that they smooth over the rough transitional patches. It probably also doesn’t hurt that writer-directors Brian Crano and David Craig are a married couple, giving them insight into the foibles of longtime partners who let nothing — not even a pile-up of dead bodies — get in the way of their family goals.

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While Crano and Craig’s modulation of the material occasionally induces tonal whiplash, there’s so much tenderness and affectionate humor poured into the relationship of principal characters Dom (Kroll) and Cole (Rannells) that it’s easy to overlook some jarring lurches. The movie starts out as one thing and then abruptly turns into something completely different midway.

It’s a welcome change, however, that queer parenthood and its attendant anxieties aren’t played for melodrama, instead providing the sweet ballast to what’s primarily a nightmare vacation comedy. Streaming platforms looking for breezy LGBTQ content could do a lot worse.

It’s hard to tell how much improv, if any, was involved in the amusing opening setup, during which Dom and Cole make multiple attempts at recording a video message pitching themselves as ideal dads. But there’s a spontaneity to their body language and banter, instantly putting across the vibe of a couple whose relationship is grounded in love and a shared sense of humor, albeit with a few frayed edges inevitable after a decade together.

We never learn much about what either man does for a living, but these are well-heeled guys living in an airy Los Angeles home, flying business class and staying in upscale boutique hotels.

Their 10-year anniversary trip to Italy gets off to a somewhat portentous start when a glop of blood lands on Cole’s shirt soon after they board their flight, from raw meat that a fellow passenger had stored in the overhead bins. But after some momentary confusion from the hotel concierge about two men booking the honeymoon suite is defused, things look up as the eagerly awaited call arrives from expectant mother Candice (Amanda Seyfried), who chooses Dom and Cole to raise the baby boy she’s putting up for adoption.

As they stroll around postcard-pretty Rome, any tension in their relationship appears to melt away, along with apprehension stemming from a painful past experience with attempted adoption. Over a meal in the home of Daniele (Paolo Romano), an old friend of Dom’s father, they learn that he has arranged an anniversary dinner for them at a farmhouse restaurant off the tourist grid outside the Umbrian town of Orvieto. Daniele’s gift to them both of engraved pocket knives seems only mildly disconcerting.

Directions prove inadequate to get to the restaurant, and Cole’s patience wears thin once they get lost in the middle of rural nowhere, their rental car stuck in the mud during a heavy rainstorm. By the time they do eventually make it to their rustic destination, with begrudging help from a surly local farmer (Arcangelo Iannace), these two pampered Americans with scarcely a word of Italian between them are borderline freaking out. The warm reception of the daffy old restaurant proprietress, Zia Luciana (Nunzia Schiano), does little to restore their composure.

The spiraling disaster of the evening involves vegetarian Cole being coerced into sampling a pizza topped with horsemeat sausage; Dom feeling endangered after misunderstanding the thick accent of Luciana’s son Massimo (Morgan Spector); and the latter’s fiancée Francesca (Eleanora Romandini) becoming hysterical when she stumbles upon what appears to be a scene of bloody mayhem.

There’s some gentle mockery in the script of Americans feeling so secure in their privilege they can walk away from any chaos unscathed, even if that chaos involves a string of (mostly) accidental deaths. One semi-running gag has Dom and Cole — and later a burly gay Italian detective (Fabio Salerno) — gasping in horror over perceived homophobic slurs, even as far more ruinous situations are unfolding. But all this is treated with an appealing buoyancy that makes even the most stereotypical jokes — concerning the inefficiency of Italian law enforcement, for instance — go down easily.

Seyfried is lovely in her brief scenes, indicating the painful process for any woman of giving up her child; and it’s fun to see Spector (who appeared alongside his wife, Rebecca Hall, in Crano’s Permission) going full carbonara with extra cheese as a rugged man of the land.

But the anchor that keeps the comedy on track despite its uneven tone is the wry double-act of Kroll and Rannells, their chemistry utterly disarming. While Rannells’ sharp comic timing and insouciant delivery are known quantities, it’s Kroll who surprises, hurling himself into the escalating panic in a droll performance that makes you hope he continues to step outside his usual sketch comedy domain. While their self-absorption and survivalism at any cost make Dom and Cole kind of reprehensible people, the actors offset all that with a sweetness that renders it possible to believe they’ll also make loving dads.