Mango: A run-of-the-mill romantic comedy on Netflix

Lærke is an ambitious Danish hotel manager who can never truly switch off, constantly glued to her phone and consumed by work projects. An obsession that has also ruined her private life: her ex-husband has long since remarried a younger woman who is now pregnant, and she has a complicated relationship with their only daughter Agnes, now eighteen.

In Mango, one day her boss decides to entrust her with the task of sending her to Malaga to buy the land where a mango plantation is located, to then build a luxury resort on it. The protagonist decides to bring Agnes with her, hoping to strengthen their increasingly strained bond. Awaiting them in Andalusia is Alex, a former Danish lawyer and fellow countryman, who became the owner of the plantation after a dramatic event a few years prior. The man categorically refuses to sell the inherited land, and an unexpected spark ignites between him and Lærke, complicating everything.

Mango: Sweet and cloying as expected

The new Netflix film directed by Iranian-Danish filmmaker Mehdi Avaz, whom we also remember for the mediocre Toscana (2022) and the more pleasant musical rom-com A beautiful life (2024), is yet another pre-packaged romantic comedy, ready to more or less slavishly follow every single cliché of the genre, without adding anything minimally original.

A predictable love story in the making from the very first frame, seasoned with the classic subplot of a mother-daughter relationship to be (re)mended, all set in glossy scenarios that seem curated specifically to highlight the tourist appeal of the setting. A disposable operation that is forgotten within a few hours, designed to fill the streaming platform's catalog rather than to leave a lasting impression in the mind and heart of the viewer, who is well aware of that already-written epilogue that will conclude the story.

The workaholic protagonist who has neglected everything for her career, the new "man of her dreams" who hides a tragedy in his past, the teenage daughter searching for her place in the world, and the new friend (or perhaps something more, but this is culpably left unexplored) who completes that idyllic picture. It matters little if the utterly predictable misunderstanding in the last half hour risks ruining everything, as the audience will have guessed that no threat can truly jeopardize the classic happy ending.

Opposites attract

Naturally, there is also the dualism between the healthy country life, with that mango plantation as a safe haven from city stress, and the unscrupulous business world ready to do anything to trample that salvific oasis. The screenplay seems written using algorithmic logic, without any genuinely new ideas that even minimally try to offer some actual surprises.

Ultimately, Mango, a title that, it must be said, is already a program in itself, seems like one of those typical postcard films, made solely to exploit and exalt the scenic beauties by inserting a routine love story. A love story that, on this occasion, cannot even rely on the passionate chemistry between the two protagonists: the synergy between the otherwise convincing Josephine Park and Dar Salim is at an all-time low, with all that entails in a package where feelings should be the main focus of the whole.