Publication Date: 02-02-2026

Solo Mio (2026) review

Dir. Chuck and Dan Kinnane

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★½

Kevin James has the underrated talent of taking half-baked material and making it palatable. Following the success of Paul Blart: Mall Cop, the 2010s had him headlining a litany of kid-centric films that produced both marginal victories (Here Comes the Boom) and otherwise inoffensive timewasters (Zookeeper).

Just as he was about to fade into being a background inclusion in his best friend Adam Sandler’s latest Netflix misfire, James played NFL coach Sean Payton in Chuck and Dan Kinnane’s film Home Team, one of the more random releases of 2022. His effortlessly amiable nature must’ve rubbed off on the Kinnane brothers, for their new film, Solo Mio, features a low-key, dramatic turn from James, who plays a lovesick loner in an Eat Pray Love-style stroll through Rome.

The opening minutes of Solo Mio get right to the crux of the material. We see a loving montage of cell phone videos showing the relationship of Matt (James), a fourth grade art teacher, and Heather (Julie Ann Emery) progress over the years. Then, at their wedding in Rome, Matt is blindsided when Heather is a no-show, leaving him a note and her ring. Perhaps even stranger, Matt has no groomsmen and evidently no family present at the wedding, so without anyone to turn to, and a non-refundable honeymoon suite already booked, he decides to just mope his way through the Eternal City.

One morning, Matt wanders into a café where he meets a friendly barista named Gia (Nicole Grimaudo), who playfully chides him about his piss-poor Italian. Gradually, they become closer, later joining two other American couples — nosey Julian (Kim Coates) and Meghan (an underutilized Alyson Hannigan), as well as the quiet Neil (Jonathan Roumie) and his therapist wife Donna (Julee Cerda) — on a bike tour through the city. Both couples have their clear flaws as marital units, which only brings Matt (and us) to question why Heather would leave him at the alter when things seemingly couldn’t have been more perfect.

Solo Mio recalls Under the Tuscan Sun, the lovely Diane Lane dramedy about a woman who responds to her husband’s infidelity by uprooting her life to Tuscany. The chief difference is the latter film was more concerned with texturing its lead character with depth and complexity. The Kinnane brothers and James (also a co-writer) seem terribly uninterested in revealing much about Matt as a person, or his relationship with Heather. It’s as if the film is on autopilot. He meets a barista and their meet-cute becomes a situationship because the plot requires it. The American couples are inserted to give Matt a look at imperfect marriages, surely what his and Heather’s would’ve become, but the script negates an opportunity to dive too deeply into their circumstances to give us the “whys” behind their respective unions. Once he realizes Heather isn’t coming, the fact that Matt doesn’t have anybody to help him at his wedding is suspicious enough to warrant an explanation, but we never get one.

Solo Mio (which means “only mine” in Italian) was shot on location in Rome, and makes that fact abundantly clear with how much time it spends lingering on the city’s natural beauty. It’s pretty, but so many shots of the busy city and its architecture feel like they’re padding a runtime that would’ve been better utilized getting to know the many individuals it introduces. Despite not having a great deal of experience with dramatic roles, James makes the most of an undernourished screenplay. Thankfully, a good deal of the first half gets to the heartbreak of the situation. The best scene in the movie involves Matt stumbling back into his honeymoon suite, drunkenly devouring the chocolate-covered strawberries meant for him and his Mrs., downing a bottle of champagne, and then slow-dancing by himself. Even when it fails to develop Matt as a person, the Kinnane brothers do right by the emotional beats of this story.

I realize I was hoping for a different kind of movie than I was given. Such is the cruel reality of harboring any kind of expectations for things these days. That said, if you’re looking for a sweetly inoffensive 90 minutes, anchored by a tried-and-true, affable everyman performer, with some lush Italian music (Joy Ngiaw on the score) and unapologetically sappy moments, Solo Mio does provide adequate warmth during the most brutally frigid time of the year.

NOTE: Solo Mio will be released theatrically in the United States on February 6th, 2026.

Starring: Kevin James, Nicole Grimaudo, Kim Coates, Jonathan Roumie, Alyson Hannigan, Julee Cerda, Julie Ann Emery, and Alessandro Carbonara. Directed by: Chuck and Dan Kinnane.