Ibiza is one of those films that isn’t what you think it will be. It presents as being a fun, raunchy, edgy comedy in the style of Judd Apatow or Lena Dunham. The trailer promises fun, romance, music and impressive vistas of the Spanish coast. What you get, however, is actually none of those things, and what you’re left with is a creepy, bland mess.

At first Ibiza seems promising, with a legitimate laugh in the first ten seconds, but swiftly goes downhill as you realise that the first laugh is probably going to be the last one. For a comedy, it is shockingly dull, setting up situations that should be funny, but just aren’t.

Then there’s the creep factor. Much of the girls’ trip is creepy to the point of being problematic. It begins with Harper’s boss telling her that she’s only being sent abroad because she’s pretty, and is expected to sleep with the client. It continues when the girls attend a party and quickly have drugs forced upon them by a pushy drug dealer. Harper says no to this several times before having another creepy conversation with a sleazy man before giving in and doing them (but it’s okay, because it turns out that she quite likes drugs. That’s okay, right?).

Another questionable plot point sees the girls getting into a cab, when the cabbie decides he’d rather take them to his house than a club, which is fine because one of the girls “knows self defence”.

It’s hard to watch a rom-com where the comedy is so spectacularly misjudged that it basically tells its audience that women being forced into uncomfortable situations with men in a strange place is funny, and also where the romance is just unbearably boring. Netflix really should know better.

RATING: 1/5


INFORMATION

CAST: Gillian Jacobs, Vanessa Bayer, Phoebe Robinson, Richard Madden

DIRECTOR: Alex Richanbach

WRITER: Lauryn Kahn

SYNOPSIS: Sent to Spain on business and with her two best friends in tow, Harper (Gillian Jacobs) decides to follow her heart after a chance meeting with up and coming DJ Leo (Richard Madden)