Common Sense Media Review
By Barbara Shulgasser-Parker
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Obsessive sex sequel is graphic; violence, language.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 18+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Watch
Videos and Photos
365 Days: This Day
What's the Story?
365 DAYS: THIS DAY gets right to it as Laura (Anna Maria Sieklucka) lolls in her wedding dress on a gazebo overlooking a scenic Sicilian coast. Enter Massimo (Michele Morrone), the brooding fiancé who kidnapped and imprisoned her in the first 365 movie, offering her a year to fall in love with him. Although seeing the bride before the wedding supposedly brings bad luck, in full wedding tuxedo, he has sex with her. That Laura is going through with a wedding to a Sicilian Mafia boss seems a demonstration of bad judgment, but perhaps marriage will make Massimo happy and even crack a smile. No such luck. Soon, Massimo is displaying all the controlling surliness Laura despised in the first movie. Marriage has neither softened him nor made him more cheerful. The two seem utterly mismatched except in the bedroom (and all their other sex venues), where in various states of dress and undress they carnally couple in various positions, kissing, licking, sucking, penetrating, and thrusting, with and without sex toys, indoors and out, in bright light and low. When Massimo's Sicilian ex plots to split the couple up, Laura catches Massimo cheating, only to learn she's played into the hands of enemies, all of which ends in violence.
Is It Any Good?
This erotica sequel offers more of the same. The first in this 365 Days franchise was a weirdly, sleazily entertaining male fantasy romp promoting the questionable notion that women crave domination, sexual and otherwise, and 365 Days: This Day is all that and less. It's a laughable scenic Italian travelogue that goes nowhere, with repetitive stops for sumptuous expensive meals and leisurely sex. The two leads are pouting, self-serious, over-privileged examples of stunted emotional growth, both ordering each other about as if their good looks made developing decency, empathy, and good manners unnecessary.
It's the juvenile nature of the characters, as portrayed in a reductive script and through cliched direction, that makes this little more than a plotless and pointless meandering from one -- yawn -- male sexual fantasy to the next. The beautiful people in it all fit cookie-cutter face and body types (a beef-cake gardener named Nacho played by Simone Susinna shows up out of nowhere, a smiling clone of the moodier Massimo). Predictable, repetitive, and ultimately boring overall, this feels like the Green Eggs and Ham of soft-core porn, a kind of condescending spoon-fed erotica. Will they do it on the floor?/Will they do it at the shore?/ Will they do it in a tree?/ Watch the movie and you'll see.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about whether the depiction of pretty people having sex is enough to generate popularity in a movie, or is something else needed to make a movie watchable?
Do you think erotica has value? Do you think it's important that only adults have access to such materials? Why or why not?
The movie's end leaves the question of another sequel open. Do you think another in this series would be a good idea? Why or why not?
Movie Details
- On DVD or streaming : April 27, 2022
- Cast : Anna Maria Sieklucka , Michele Morrone , Simone Sussina
- Director : Barbara Bialowas. Tomasz Mandes
- Studio : Netflix
- Genre : Romance
- Run time : 106 minutes
- MPAA rating :
- Last updated : April 28, 2022
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