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Culpa Mia might be Prime Video’s trashiest venture yet, but it at least arrives with a self-aware wink and two likable leads.
Based on Mercedes Ron’s Wattpad sensation the Culpables trilogy, it’s easy to see how these pulpy enemies-to-lovers paperbacks have amassed thousands of young adult fans in Spain.
Unfortunately, the toxic romance between bad boy Nick (played by Gabriel Guevara) and his new step-sister Noah (Nicole Wallace) doesn’t quite work in translation.
The older son of her mother’s rich new husband, Noah immediately takes a dislike to her entitled new housemate, but her paper-thin hatred for Nick quickly melts away to forbidden attraction.
Noah’s first introduced as a textbook YA protagonist; a know-it-all with a sharp tongue and her nose in a book, she begins Culpa Mia devouring Shakespeare and trading barbs with her long-suffering mother.
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It goes without saying that she’s beautiful but doesn’t know it, and the film’s outdated tropes don’t stop there.
Once Nick enters the picture it’s plain to see where the story is going, and it doesn’t take too long before heavy breathing, stolen kisses and sultry nights on the sand take center stage.
Daily Express US was lucky enough to meet the leads in Madrid, who told us they’d built up their electric on-screen chemistry over years of friendship before they ever signed on.
While their natural charisma is apparent, Nick’s insistence on calling Noah “sis” is more of a cringey distraction than tantalising taboo.
There’s also the unpleasant age gap – Noah is a 17-year-old teen while Nick is 22 – which, combined with their skin-crawling step-sibling status, threatens to turn off even the most open-minded viewers.
If director Domingo González is determined to break boundaries with Culpa Mia, he does so by leaning into Ron’s frankly preposterous plotting that U-turns from Euphoria to Fast and Furious without ever flicking the indicator.
In one early scene, Nick aggressively tongues three girls in a row in front of an exasperated Noah at a pool party attended by street racers and fight clubbers.
That’s right – as Noah finds herself falling for her deliciously dangerous new step-bro, she’s also indoctrinated into his underworld of fast cars and shirtless brawls.
All his friends and foes are introduced with the history and gravitas of Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his crew, but the action scenes’ poor staging and baby-faced drivers make for even more ludicrous viewing than blockbuster stinker Fast X.
Meanwhile, Noah has a dark history herself which rears its head in a bonkers finale that approaches tension as a polar bear would a pogo stick.
It’s almost to the film’s credit, as the tonal whiplash makes for some genuine laugh-out-loud moments that are almost too silly to be unintentional.
Sadly, the admittedly sexy slog to the finish line makes this hard to recommend beyond fans of the book.
Newcomers can already find dozens of racy romances of equal and better quality in the new fiction section and Netflix’s back catalog, and Wallace and Guevara’s charms all too often get lost in the carnage.
Culpa Mia premieres Thursday, June 8 on Amazon Prime Video.
