Fantasy Football Ruined Our Lives Review
Director: Alessio Maria Federici
Date Created: 2025-08-27 23:14
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Fantasy Football Ruined Our Lives Review: Alessio Maria Federici’s Ogni Maledetto Fantacalcio is an Italian Netflix comedy film that blends comedy, friendship, and the chaos of adult life. The film has Giacomo Ferrara playing Simone, Enrico Borello playing Gianni, Francesca Agostini playing Bianca, Francesco Russo playing Nicola, Antonio Bannò playing Federico, Giacomo Bottoni playing Francesco, and Francesco Giordano playing Jacopo. They are friends who have one thing in common—fantasy football. A stag party ends up being mayhem, miscommunication, and shattered trust.
Fantasy Football Ruined Our Lives Review
Netflix’s Fantasy Football Ruined Our Lives is set against the backdrop of a fantasy football-obsessed band of men, but the movie is trying to explore something deeper—how relationships and friendships go off track once passions turn into addictive habits. The disappearance of Gianni sets a chain of events in motion where the loyalty, maturity, and even integrity of the group are questioned.
I absolutely loved the idea of portraying how something so mundane as a game would impact relationships and even be an escape from accountability. The fantasy football here is not so much about scores and goals but about how adults avoid reality in their own comfort zones. What this concept could have been was amazing, but what I found was that the film hardly touched on it and did not explore it deeply.
The film Fantasy Football Ruined Our Lives is advertised as a comedy, but to be honest, I wasn’t laughing that much. Much of the comedy depends on in-jokes about fantasy football, and if you’re not highly invested in the sport or the culture of fantasy leagues, the comedy does not land. As the type of person who gets football but isn’t a fantasy football player, I kind of felt like a fly on the wall listening to a conversation that I couldn’t totally follow.
There were a few amusing moments when the friends quarrelled like kids or got too hyper about the game, and the scenes did make me laugh. But as a comedy, I expected more writing and more amusingly mundane circumstances. Most of the scenes, though, were arguments eternal about points and scores, which soon became tiresome.
What did work for me was the casting. Giacomo Ferrara as Simone, the best man and central character, carried much of the story with his nervous energy. Enrico Borello as Gianni, the groom-to-be, had a certain charm, though his role was more of a plot device than a fully developed character. Among the group, I enjoyed Francesco Russo’s performance as Nicola, the only married man, because his struggles between family life and friendship felt relatable.
But the characters also, at times, felt very caricatures, rather than actual people. All of them were boiled down to one characteristic—the lawyer, the married one, the kooky friend—and the movie never allowed them to be anything greater than caricatures. This was maddening, because a movie about friends for life had to be more emotionally authentic and textured.
One of the better subplots in Italian film Fantasy Football Ruined Our Lives is about love, betrayal, and relationship problems. But again, the way it was done was terrible. The romance, which was supposed to be tight and bickering, never materialised. There is also a climactic confrontation that was supposed to be dramatic and moving, but it was handled so flatly that no tension at all was achieved. I had to sense the heartbreak or the shock, yet the scene arrived and departed without registering.
Netflix Fantasy Football Ruined Our Lives Review: Summing Up
Overall, the movie Fantasy Football Ruined Our Lives left me with an unbalanced experience. On the positive side, I loved the idea of friendship and the manner in which these dumb, childlike men continually return to one another. The cast performed decently together, and there were instances of real chemistry. On the negative, the comedy lacked bite, the love lacked substance, and the plot shied away from confronting its bleaker, more fascinating recesses. If you are a fantasy football fan, then the film can be a more enjoyable and more realistic experience for you. But for the average viewer like me, the jokes would most likely be such a chore and the story so weak for its own good.
