There might be spoilers in this review but trust me: there won’t be anything you haven’t predicted from the poster or trailer.

Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johannson) are good friends who come to Barcelona for the summer.  They are pretty opposite when it comes to their views about romance, love and relationships as the film’s narrator (Christopher Evan Welch) informs us: Vicky values commitment and is engaged to be married (to Doug-played by Chris Messina). Cristina loves drama and passion and even though she doesn’t know what she wants from a relationship, she is sure she is not striving for the stability Vicky seems to be so fond of.

With the occasional but not overly intrusive additions from the narrator, we follow the girls to the house (family friend of Vicky’ s- played by Patricia Clarkson) they will be staying at, going to an art gallery and meeting the movie’s leading guy: Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem).While Cristina is fascinated about what he learns about the guy (that he is a painter and had a violent relationship with his ex-wife Maria Elena/played by Penelope Cruz) and his good looks, Vicky seems less than impressed. She seems even less happy when Antonio comes over to meet them and offers to sleep with them both. He offers a weekend trip and obviously it is up to the girls whether they want to have sex or not. While Vicky is outraged, Cristina has loved how upfront Antonio is and finds him absolutely charming. So despite her better senses, Vicky follows Cristina to the place Antonio takes them.  However when Cristina gets sick, Vicky is left to spend time with Antonio and to her surprise, she realizes she does want him- a lot!

Guess what happens afterwards? Although Juan Antonio can’t have the threesome he envisioned, he does managed to bed Vicky first and Cristina later- who doesn’t know about the night with Vicky. Now, we have a guilty and confused Vicky, an experimental Cristina who doesn’t even seem to mind when his psychotic ex-wife (Penelope Cruz) comes into the picture. In fact, she even “experiments” with her. Even though this love triangle seems to be working for a while, Mary Elena is highly unstable and neither Vicky nor her fiancé were ever out of the picture.

Written and directed by Woody Allen, this film is easy to watch and is entertaining. However I need to warn you: I am not a Woody Allen fan and most of his films bored me to death as I don’t usually his share his views on relationships or his sense of humor.  And for me, Vicky Cristina Barcelona was a popcorn film- an entertaining, light comedy so I totally disagree with IMDB’s genre labels: drama and romance. There is nothing romantic or dramatic about this film. It is a fun little love rectangle to watch with some real eye candy for both sexes, beautiful location that is Barcelona and great music. This film is  a nicely told male fantasy. Think about it: a painter charms the pants out of two good friends and one of them would probably have a threesome if the other one had been up for it. Then the experimental girl sleeps with his ex-wife…Seriously! A man gets to have all three women in one movie, two of who have sex with each other and one of these women is Penelope Cruz. The other is Scarlett Johannson. While Javier Bardem is certainly a good-looking guy, he is not that cute. No man is.

Sure, it is a common female fantasy to meet a stranger on exotic soil and have a romantic night or two with him. But those fantasies most often don’t involve best friends, lesbian sex, threesomes and cheating on lovely fiancés. But then again, if your idea of romance and fantasy are anything in line with Woody Allen’s mentality, you will disagree with me. Yes, I disagree with the guy’s outlook on life- he slept with his adopted daughter, for God’s sake!

But I’ll say it again, this movie is a fun comedy. And it does make me want to go to Barcelona. And I’ll rate it a 6/10 (it is rated a 7.4 on IMDB). But if you don’t watch this movie, you won’t have missed a thing.

Note: There is one thing romantic about this film: Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz started dating during the shoot and now they are married.