A movie called "Love Is All You Need" is clearly a movie that does not mess around. Most films may try to weave the message or theme into the story with some nuance, but not "Love Is All You Need." It’s right there in the title: The characters in this movie will learn that love is, in fact, all you need. It’s like if you took "The Great Gatsby" and re-titled it "Money Can’t Buy Happiness," or turned "After Earth" into "Will Smith Wants His Son To Be Famous."

With a blunt title like that, what else could you possibly expect? Not much apparently.

"Love Is All You Need" is sweet and likely crowd-pleasing enough, but Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier – best known for her drama "Brothers," which was remade in 2009 with Jake Gyllenhaal and Tobey Maguire – and her usually acute touch for relationships and people are unfortunately rung through some really sappy, trite and predictable romance movie material here. It plays like "Under the Tuscan Sun" or "Mamma Mia" for people who want to think they’re better than "Under the Tuscan Sun" or Mamma Mia."

Danish actress Trine Dyrholm stars as Ida, a cheery hairdresser and cancer survivor who comes home one day to find her oafish husband (Kimtri Bodnia) cheating on her with one of his bubbly young employees. I’m glad to see the formula of gorgeous wife/shlubby husband isn’t confined to CBS sitcoms.

Anyways, the discovery comes at a decent time because Ida is off to the gorgeous Italian countryside to attend her daughter’s wedding. Before she gets there, though, she has a fender bender with Philip (Pierce Brosnan), a widowed workaholic who is also on his way to Italy, as he happens to be her future son-in-law’s father.

She’s all breezy and carefree. He’s all cold and bitter. You see where this is going. She progressively cracks through his heart’s jaded outer shell, and the two fall in love amidst the scenic lemon groves and old Italian villas. Meanwhile, the actual wedding is a far less cheery picture, as both parties (Molly Blixt Egelind and Sebastian Jessen) start to get cold feet.

The young couple’s dilemma is actually a far more interesting story – the groom-to-be starts thinking he might be gay – but they’re just a half-baked side drama. Screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen, who shares a story credit with Bier as well, is far more captivated by the clichéd love story between Ida and Philip.

He’s the only one, as they’re just well-worn character types surrounded by even more hackneyed plot elements, including the dopey husband, his ditzy new fling, the inevitable separation between the two main lovers, the overaggressive romantic rival, her snippy daughter, etc. Even the rustic Italian setting, though gorgeous, seems a little stale.

The shallow rival and her petulant daughter listed before are an especially false step for "Love Is All You Need." Their back-and-forth loathing of one another is supposed to be funny, but it ends up being ugly and so is Brosnan’s eventual put-down of his obnoxious admirer. I understand she’s a loud and mean woman, but it’s not satisfying or amusing to see our protagonist stoop to her level.

The lone consistent bright spot in this otherwise tired pap is Dyrholm. She has a warm, sweet glow that brings a bit of real soul to the film. She’s a radiant streak of yellow paint confined to a bland, beige canvas that needs a bit more than just love.