Jan 20, 2021
“Perfect Strangers,” the 2016 hit Italian comedy, had inspired 18 remakes by July 2019, a feat recognized by Guinness World Records.
The four versions of the film I’ve seen Korean, French, Japanese and the original by Paolo Genovese are all entertaining enough. But the setup three couples and one single man agree to share each other’s smartphone text and voice messages as a sort of “truth or dare” game at a dinner party is hardly groundbreaking, if clever. A compromising email is just a modern version of a letter that elicits laughs when read aloud on stage, a convention going back to Plautus, the Neil Simon of ancient Rome.