Under the Riccione Sun review – a teenage story of summer love and friendship

By Daniel Hart
Published: July 1, 2020 (Last updated: last month)
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Netflix film Under the Riccione Sun
3.5

Summary

There’s nothing particularly special about Under the Riccione Sun but it is undeniably enjoyable to watch.

This review of Netflix film Under the Riccione Sun contains no spoilers. The Italian teen drama film was released on the platform on July 1, 2020.


There’s nothing particularly special about Under the Riccione Sun but it is undeniably enjoyable to watch. The drama will be undoubtedly enjoyed by teenagers purely on the dream of that hot summer with a group of friends; hormones raging in the air and the prospect of “summer love” running in the veins. That’s the advert of the Italian film that flagrantly aspires to immerse the viewer in a teen fantasy and gently make it nostalgic.

You can almost smell the suncream through the screen as a majority of the scenes enjoy themselves on a busy beach. This is a holiday film but with a routine well-written story to back it up. Netflix’s Under the Riccione Sun follows a group of teenagers who have their own crushes and spend most of their holiday managing romantic relationships and summer crushes.

If you’ve had a group of friends or been part of this holiday environment, then the Netflix film is satisfyingly relatable. These type of summers feel like a paradise — an eternity of endless possibilities where best friends are made for life and obvious romances are throned on the possibility that they will last — the group knows it won’t last but that intensity of making the most out of a small window grows bonds and a family mentality that in normal environments take years. It’s why some Universities offer therapy for students who return from a gap year abroad — it’s mentally difficult to forget a period of your life where a group of people became a family in a tiny period of your existence.

Under the Riccione Sun encapsulates that notion well in a typical teen genre that many will roll their eyes at but sometimes, audiences need films that give them time to switch off and curiously wonder how these relationships will conclude.

Movie Reviews, Netflix