Letâs be straight here: My Fault: London (now streaming on Amazon Prime Video) exists only because Americans (and Brits) donât like to read subtitles. The 2023 Spanish movie Culpa Mia (translation: My Fault, duh), about a steamy stepsibling romance, was a fat Prime Video hit. Its sequel, Culpa Tuya (Your Fault), is reportedly the most-watched international feature ever released by the streamer, and soon to be followed by a third film, all based on a trilogy of novels by Spanish writer Mercedes Ron. So this English-language version, starring newcomers Asha Banks and Matthew Broome, was a no-brainer, since all you have to do to skimp on the budget is feed the original script into Google Translate. You canât skimp on much else here, especially the costume budget, since itâs rampant with contrived shirtlessness. But hey, at least weâre looking at different dampened, nuded-up torsos this time around, right?
MY FAULT: LONDON: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: There are worse things than being uprooted to London to live in a mansion with servants and a pool and all that jazz. But you canât convince Noah (Banks) of this. Kinda canât blame her â sheâs a Miami surfer girl being forced to leave behind the waves and warmth and a doofy but nice boyfriend and all her buds. It sucks. Her mother, Ella (Eve Macklin), met and married rich guy (William) Ray Fearon, and the move will give Noah a âfresh start,â Ella insists, âespecially after everything that happened.â Ooh â what is that Everything? Sorry, weâre not there yet, amigo. On top of all that, sheâs gaining a stepbrother whoâs got a thing for expensive fancy cars, and who sheâs prejudged as an entitled nepo-twat. She gets to London and isnât impressed by any of this posh bullshit. Everything sucks when youâre 18.
Then she looks out the window and spots Nick (Broome) emerging shirtless from the pool in slow motion, and somehow doesnât have an instantly fatal lust-aneurysm.
Noah responds by treating Nick like butt. Three seconds after meeting, they exchange insults. Real grade-school playground shit from legal adults who are objectively, face-meltingly, obscenely beautiful. Physically, anyway. Between the ears though, they seem ugly as a deep-fried blobfish-and-beets platter from Applebeeâs. Itâs like an insult-comics competition around here. Pointless plot developments that arenât worth summarizing and barely justify their existence in the movie beyond putting our protags into excruciatingly sexy eveningwear reveal that there might be more to Nick than Noah thought â he designed and sold a ride-share app for zillions, so heâs not just leeching off his dad. I guess thatâs something, right?
Sure. Thereâs more to both of them than meets the eye, of course. Theyâve defrosted a little bit by now, enough for Noah to tag along with Nick to a party. At the very least, getting out might help Noah get over the fact that her back-home BF just shtoinked her back-home BFF. The partyâs in a car park, and all the attendees have uber-expensive and/or uber-souped-up autos. She makes fast friends with Jenna (Enva Lewis), and learns that Nick not only illegally races his uber-expensive autos, but also participates in illegal bare-knuckle boxing matches. BAD BOY CITY. And then Nick learns something about Noah, namely, that she knows her way around a gearshift. Donât be filthy â she can drive like the dickens. Nickâs face-tatted rival Ronnie (Sam Buchanan) turns up to race him and before Nick can say anything Noah hops behind the wheel and makes Ronnie eat her dust and inhale her tailpipe effluvia. How about that.
Then the cops break up the shindig and Nick has to usher Noah outta there. She just stood there, paralyzed. On the way home, she shares that she has panic attacks when sheâs in tight spaces or witness to violence, and yes, you may take that as foreshadowing. She also explains that her dad taught her to race before he went to prison. See, theyâre getting to know each other as human beings and not just libidinous objects, because getting to know each other as human beings allows them to treat each other like libidinous objects. Which, of course, starts to happen, as dictated by the law about the two most attractive people in the movie. This is a problem, although itâs sorta shoved aside by a moronic third-act kidnapping plot. It happens.Â
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Wasnât there weird stepsibling stuff in Cruel Intentions? Otherwise, My Fault: London makes the After movies look pretty bad, which doesnât mean My Fault: London is actually good, just less bad. It also has a random-ass unplot the likes of which were established by the later Fifty Shades movies, which also sometimes got confused and thought they were compelling thrillers.
Performance Worth Watching: There are moments when Banks lets a little mischief leak through the metric ton of angst heaped upon her character, enough to make you want to see what sheâs capable of in a different movie, one that isnât dumbo-brained junk.
Memorable Dialogue: âI never believed in happy endings.â â Noah bookends the movie with this phrase, delivered via voiceover, that doesnât really make sense in the context of the story. But at least itâs faux-profound!
Sex and Skin: Not even a bare buttcheek. (I know, right?) But there is a fair amount of soft-R sexiness here.
Our Take: Aside from a few minor details, this is the exact same story as Culpa Mia, but with different slabs of lickable flesh in front of the camera. I feel like a perv saying that, but at least everyoneâs of age here (the lead character in the Spanish original was 17), and weâre fooling ourselves if we say weâre pressing play on this one for the half-baked melodrama and ineptly directed action sequences. No, this is all about the HORNEE TEENZ. There isnât even any real estate porn of note, which betrays the ugly truth: this movie is, by a razor-thin margin, just barely a professional production. If we donât get to watch gorgeous humans grease up marble countertops in palatial kitchens with their lusty juices, weâre just wasting our damn time.
The filmâs insistence on soldiering gamely through a bunch of dull and cluttery plot nonsense left my brain unoccupied, and therefore open to parse the concept of âromantic chemistryâ in movies. Real talk: How much do we really need to get to know characters in quasi-YA softcore romances before they start scaling each other like Everest? The pretense of character development is a hoop My Fault: London jumps through in order to get to the scene where Nick and Noah secretly grope each other in the pool, playing a game of Donât Moan Or They Might Hear You. It takes even longer for them to consummate their carnal desires â by the numbers, 90 minutes of a two-hour movie. Delayed gratification is the M.O. here. Youâve been warned. But for some audiences, the foreplay might be base-level satisfying enough.
Our Call: Sorry, but Iâm not eagerly awaiting My Fault: Tashkent or My Fault: Schenectady. But call me when they make My Fault: Springfield. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘My Fault: London’ on Amazon Prime Video, an English-Language Reiteration of a Steamy Spanish Lustathon appeared first on Decider.
