The Taming of the Shrewd 2 Review: The Polish sequel of the 2022 romantic comedy released on Netflix on December 2023. Starring Magdalena Lamparska, Mikolaj Roznerski, Agata Turkot, Piotr Nerlewski, Tomasz Sapryk, Piotr Cyrwus and others, the quirky film (Poskoromienie Zlosnicy 2) set in the backdrop of a snow-capped landscape has been directed by Filip Zylber. Providing the ideal premise for the catalogue of romantic Christmas movies on Netflix, this movie’s visuals remind you to cuddle up in warmth, but that may not be enough for it go the distance as a memorable watch. Here’s why.
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The Taming of the Shrewd Netflix Sequel Review Contains No Spoilers
The Taming of the Shrewd 2 Review
The movie begins with Kaska leaving for the US to accept an award honouring her career, which sparks rumours of infidelity between her and Patryk, who’d seemingly found love and comfort in each other. The situation takes a bigger fall when the neighbours keep meddling in their matters and exacerbate the tensions that shouldn’t have arisen in the first place.
The Taming of the Shrewd 2‘s setting works perfectly as the background for a Christmas movie. The allure, the vision, the snow, all of it is right there. Much like many stereotypical Hallmark movies that drag out the protagonist from a big city to a small and compact town for the characters to get in touch with their innate feelings and experience the goodness of homecoming, this Netflix film heads towards the exact opposite direction by pulling its female lead back to the big city to disrupt the order established between her and her love interest.
In this reverse portrayal of what Christmas movies were usually about, neighbour figures aptly embody the infuriating crossing of wires and heightening tensions. They push for the latent thoughts of the couple having found new flames to such great extent that their words are bound to push you to believe everything they’re claiming to be the truth. However, moving past this familiar chaos churned out by the oh-so familiar group of people whom you may have spotted in your vicinity too, the dynamics developed between the main characters do nothing great for the movie as a whole.
Even though the sequel is billed as a romantic comedy title, we barely get to witness the romantic part between the said couple, and the second-most important pair of lovers introduced later on. The Taming of the Shrewd movie sequel doesn’t even make the effort to problematise the new friendship spark once the mix-up happens. On top of that, the whole past flame arc with Bob and Kaska’s unlikely reunion doesn’t do any wonders either. It merely floats on the surface as a reminder of Kaska’s past life that went by, but even these pieces of history hold no powers of grounding her character arc.
Merely guided by who these characters have been paired up with, the storyline barely puts in any efforts to expand their personal narratives, which could’ve otherwise also supplemented the depths of their relationship arcs as well. However, it seems as if this sequel only exists for the neighbours to introduce any sort of comical drama to invoke entertainment, but that can only do so much in pulling the heavy weight off the ground. Such movies of the genre that originally used to strike a chord with the audience by at least introducing to us some worthwhile heart-fluttering moments, the are now dragged down in an aimless direction that has nothing to do with unity in love per se.
The Taming of the Shrewd 2 Movie: Final Moments
The Polish rom-com opts out for the chaotic fun route by keeping things fun. However, this fun particularly seems to serve no purpose, nor does it head in a focussed direction. In hopes of pulling off the romantic track, the movie builds up an inconsequential case of mix-ups, that also result in a lacking representation of love itself. If you’d like to see where the characters ended up after the first movie’s journey, then go ahead and check it out. Other than that, I can assure you that there are several other better rom-coms, even if labelled as guilty pleasures, that will do much more to entertain you with at least some sense of palpable romantic momentum.