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The topic of chauvinistic men getting served by the strong women in their lives seems to be a popular topic in Europe. After the Spanish comedy Alpha Males debuted in 2022, three remakes have been released in the last four months. The latest is from Italy.
REAL MEN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Four men speak up at a seminar that at first feels like it’s from a 12-step program, and they all talk about what it means to be called a “real man.” The presenter calls out their sterotypes: “Frat boy cockiness. Prejudice against women. Pathetic attempts at ‘gender washing.’ And male pride.”
The Gist: The four friends — Mattia (Maurizio Lastrico), Massimo (Matteo Martari), Riccardo (Francesco Montanari) and Luigi (Pietro Sermonti) — are at a seminar about toxic masculinity, and they’re all there reluctantly (though Mattia takes notes).
Three months earlier, Massimo argues with his boss at the cable network where he works; his boss feels the content he’s been selecting is sexist. Massimo then finds out that he’s being replaced; the new programmer is a woman, in the CEO’s hope that the network appeals to a younger, less male demographic. He tells his fiancée Daniela (Laura Adriani) that he quit. In order to help pay for their new huge house, Daniela decides to become a social media influencer.
Mattia, a tour guide, is interrupted at work by his ex-wife Federica (Nicole Grimaudo), who is looking for their 17-year-old daughter Emma (Alice Lupparelli). They find out that Emma has decided to move in with Mattia, leaving his Federica furious. Emma then proceeds to set her single dad up on Tinder.
Riccardo, a restauranteur, tells his married sex buddy that his girlfriend Ilenia (Sarah Felberbaum) has a special dinner planned. His buddies convince him that she’s going to say she’s pregnant, but she proposes they have an open relationship. On the other end of the spectrum, bus driver Luigi’s wife Tiziana (Thony) is completely unsatisfied with his lack of sex drive and when Luigi tries to bring toys into the bedroom, it doesn’t go well.
All of the men’s issues with the women in their lives come to a head during a dinner party at Massimo’s house, which is also where the friends told Mattio’s Tinder date to meet him. Let’s just say she was greeted with a lot of yelling about sex and a man not ready to go out on a date.
Photo: LUCIA IUORIO/NETFLIXWhat Shows Will It Remind You Of? Real Men is a remake of the 2022 Spanish comedy Alpha Males, as is the French comedy Shafted and the Dutch comedy Roosters.
Our Take: We’ve been thinking a little about why the series Alpha Males has generated so many remakes, and all of them are from Europe. It makes us wonder if the series could be remade in the U.S. We’re not sure, and our thoughts about Real Men will explain why.
Real Men is one of versions of this show that leans heaviest on male chauvinist stereotypes that feel like they come out of a past decade, not the 2020s. Yes, there are plenty of unevolved men in the United States, but it’s hard to make a comedy about ones who are as outwardly piggish as the men without the show getting pigeonholed as being “conservative,” even if the men get their comeuppance, like the men do in all of these series.
For instance, Massimo gets heat from his boss for casting a busty woman as the Mona Lisa, and Massimo responds by asking if he should have cast someone “stumpy and frumpy.” Riccardo says that women love Italian men “because we dare to look at their asses.” These are the types of statements that might still be cringey but funny in Europe but would just clank on American ears, or be something that Tim Allen says in Shifting Gears to sweetened audience guffaws because he’s being an over-the-top a-hole.
Anyway, the moments that are funny in the other versions are funny here, mostly revolving around the vibrating butt plug that Luigi buys to spice things up with Tiziana, especially when their son finds it the next day and brings it to school. Like in the other versions, we hope to find out why Luigi’s sex drive has tanked, but it might just end up seeing what happens when he takes Viagra and doesn’t go much deeper.
(FYI, like in the review of Roosters, we copy-pasted the Gist section above from the Alpha Males review and then edited it, to show how closely the respective shows’ first episodes resemble each other.)
Photo: LUCIA IUORIO/NETFLIXSex and Skin: A little bit of nudity when Riccardo gets dressed after having sex with the woman he’s having an affair with, citing the idea that men need to have sex with different women to survive. Of course, he’s horrified when Ilenia wants to open their relationship.
Parting Shot: We see the friends back at the seminar, being told that the goal is to destroy toxic masculinity. “The fuck?” Massimo asks. “How the fuck did we end up here, is what I want to know,” says Riccardo.
Sleeper Star: Thony plays the super-horny Tiziana with the proper amount of anger and desperation, and her rant to the young teacher about being married was one of the better ones among the versions of the series.
Most Pilot-y Line: Why is the pathetic married guy on this series always some public employee?
Our Call: STREAM IT. Real Men sticks to the formula that makes Alpha Males and Roosters work, which is making sure the silly men on the show see the affects of their sexism quickly and often.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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