‘I Don’t Understand You’ Sends Gay Dads on the Italian Vacay From Hell

In the opening moments of I Don’t Understand You, a laugh-a-minute new comedy that premiered March 8 during this year’s SXSW, stars Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells ask themselves a deceptively complicated question: Would you do anything for your child? It’s a query that most parents have probably pondered at one point or another. One hopes the immediate answer is “yes,” but if you want to get wacky with the hypothetical circumstances surrounding the question, that response might not come easily. But prospective parents Dom (Kroll) and Cole (Rannells) brush off their wandering minds, continuing the video they’re recording for a mother-to-be (Amanda Seyfried) whose baby they hope to adopt. This well-to-do couple has it pretty easy. What’s the wildest thing that they could have to do for their child?

Unsurprisingly, that fateful question colors the increasingly wacky events of I Don’t Understand You, which has all the makings of a classic screwball comedy, right down to its fairly simple premise. Dom and Cole are about to celebrate their 10th anniversary with a trip to Italy, which will hopefully be their last vacation before they welcome their first child. (As victims of adoption fraud, they’re trying to keep their hopes from getting too high this time around.) But when their getaway takes an unexpectedly morbid turn, the couple is forced to prove to themselves just how desperately they want to be fathers, and make it back to the United States unscathed.

While the title of I Don’t Understand You directly refers to the language barrier that Cole and Dom experience on their Italian vacay, it’s also a wink to how couples are forced to work together in the most dire of situations. For all of the time the movie spends mining humor from linguistic obstacles, it’s a miracle that it doesn’t veer into questionably xenophobic territory. But the film, directed and co-written by husbands David Joseph Craig and Brian Crano, is far too smart to fall prey to that cringey trap. I Don’t Understand You stays one step ahead of its audience at every turn, armed and ready with unexpected gags and memorably biting dialogue that repeatedly quell suspicions about whether or not it can pull off its big narrative swings.

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