Wonderful, gentle and very funny

They work so well together and in my opinion bring out the best in each other. The fact that they play a slightly altered version of themselves is so clever and so believable that I'm certain some viewers will be entirely taken in by some of the racier elements of the story. In fact I'm sure both actors will have had some quite serious discussions with their families to set the record straight. Loved the scenery, the real sense of Italy, the fabulous foods and above all the hilarious back-and-forth between Rob and Steve.

3 people found this helpful

Read the story for the gist, not the details

For beginners, reading and listening to short stories can be a fun and painless way of learning Italian. Easy Italian short stories will introduce you to new vocabulary and sentence structures, while the accompanying audio material will help you with listening comprehension. They easy if compared to a book. You also find an English translation to view in case you just can’t guess the meaning of the text.

3 people found this helpful

A realistic Portrait of Italy

Interesting format, fast paced, intense with pathos and beauty, a complex ode to Italy, but here Italy is everywhere. Surely, not to be judged on the likeness of a national portrait, but on the quality of the cuts and transitions. Very basic material: Waking up, cooking, eating lunch, going to bed, clouds passing, but sufficiently philosophical and fast so it never gets boring. There are a few temptations of YouTube here (animals, cats), but I can live with that. Worthwhile, not so much for what it may teach you about Italy, but for what it may show you about the love of humans for other humans.

2 people found this helpful

Personae at Play in Italy

Full story filled with their fairly boring faces while frustratingly, Italy, in all its green and aromatic glory is reduced to playing a background fleeting extra. Beautiful food is given a brisk token summary of a Benidorm-type review, while unbearable fractured Italian and pompous guide-book knowledge makes one wish their inflated boat would sink immediately with their over-inflated egos.

2 people found this helpful

THE QUICK & EASY FIX

With Italian, you don’t have a parade of silent letters, homographs, homonyms or letters pronounced as something else. (I’m not saying there are no exceptions, but it’s true for a great majority of Italian words.) Words that are pronounced exactly as they look, like amore (love), vino (wine) and antipasto (appetizer), not only make things more palatable but they also make the language much easier to learn.

1 person found this helpful

Easy, Fast and Effective for Anyone

There’s just something about written words that make a language more tangible and specific. So you have your word lists, flashcards, lyrics and movie subtitles that help you get the language down pat. The challenge comes in those instances when the written form bears very little resemblance to how a word is actually pronounced, such as when silent letters occur.

1 person found this helpful

Simply wonderful in its portrayal of humanity

If you know French, Spanish or Portuguese, chances are you already know a little bit of Italian. These languages belong to the same linguistic family, the Romance languages. They’re derived from Latin, the language spoken by the Romans. As a result, they have plenty of cognates, or words that look and sound very similar to one another. It’s often said that Spanish-speaking tourists can land in Italy and make their way around town just by relying on cognates.

1 person found this helpful

Self indulgent nonsense

Apart from the beautiful scenery, and a couple of chuckles, this was boring. Normally I enjoy these guys, but this just doesn't work. Watching two mates eating, and doing impressions every five minutes, with an attempt at being funny thrown in, was embarrassing. I was hoping for more views of an amazing journey, but was left feeling short changed in that department. Whilst both Rob and Steve are very clever in their own right, this union seemed more of a challenge to outdo each other. I thought this would be more of a documentary type of movie, but sadly I was mistaken. If you're die hard fans of the duo, I guess this is for you.

3 people found this helpful

Great choice audio book about Learn Italian!

Love it! This book is really helping me to understand and speak Italian better. It is so much more interesting to listen a story than to do a grammar lesson from a textbook or even to repeat aloud on a tape. I will be buying more of these. Please keep publishing. Fabulous!

Well-spoken & interesting fact about Short Stories

I recently finished listening this book and it was a really nice listen! I am teaching myself Italian as a hobby and currently have what I consider to be an early intermediate level knowledge of the language. I was able to follow the gist of all the short stories in this book without much difficulty and the explanations of important words/expressions at the end of each chapter of a story were really helpful in further consolidating my understanding.