By John Serba
Published April 3, 2026, 3:15 p.m. ET
It Takes a Village is the hotly-anticipated-by-someone-out-there sequel to the 2024 Polish romantic comedy No Pressure, so that means Netflix has performed the surely elaborate ceremony to initiate the “No Pressure Collection” into the hallowed halls of streaming-movie canon. (No, really. Not joking. The “No Pressure Collection” does indeed exist.) The core four castmembers, led by Anna Szymanczyk, return to pick up where the previous outing left us, namely, wondering if the Hallmark Channel has an office in Poland now, since these movies have all the heft of a single sheet of Precious Moments-branded stationery. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing – for some of us, anyway.
IT TAKES A VILLAGE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: RECAP: You surely recall that, in No Pressure, Oliwka (Szymanczyk) was a big-city chef who moved to the provincial town of Bodzki to help her grandmother Halina (Anna Seniuk) save the farm. And as these things inevitably go, the whole place burned and everyone died due to a swamp-gas explosion. No! That’s a lie! Actually, Oliwia fell in love with cute farmer Kuba (Mateusz Janicki), opened up a little restaurant and lived happily ever after in the countryside. And now we see that happily-ever-after as It Takes a Village opens with a wedding. Oliwia and Kuba stand at the altar and <insert fzwoop! record-scratch sound here> they’re standing up for the actual bride and groom, Halina and the humble town woodcarver, Jan (Artur Barcis)! Gotcha! The ol’ bait-’n’-switch!
But, as the wise guy once famously said, if only ’twere so simple. Halina bolts before the I dos are said, and there stands Jan and the priest and the maid of honor and the best man and the police chief and the band (complete with tuba, can’t have a Polish marriage ceremony without a tuba) and all the guests, wondering what the heck happened. But we, the audience, being relatively omniscient, know what the heck happened. Local doofus Wojtek (Filip Gurlacz) informs Halina that she’s deep in debt after she gave him all her money to invest in a crypto scheme that, major shocker, epically failed. The farm is in foreclosure, and she’s so mortified she just can’t marry Jan anymore.
But this town is so small, she can’t just go into hiding. Like 26 people live in Bodzki and secrets quickly become unsecrets around these here parts. And right about now is when the locals discover mysterious crop circles in the field. You know what this means? Right – aliens kidnapped Halina’s brain. No! That’s also a lie! These quirky country folk faked the crop circles in order to draw tourists to Bodzki so Halina can make piles of money selling the cheese she makes on her farm. In fact, everyone sells their wares to the dumbo suckers who flock to town to gawk, and profits go to Halina. Meanwhile, the subplots pile up around the main plot so the movie isn’t over in 14 minutes: Oliwia’s mother Ewa (Joanna Trzepiecinska) arrives for the nonwedding and stays a while. Wojtek nurses a May-December crush on Ewa. Halina’s ex shows up to amp up the tension between her and Jan. Ewa paints a mural of the townsfolk on the outside wall of the restaurant. Ewa eyes Jan’s beautiful carvings and makes a call to her big-city art-snob friends in New York. Multiple people fall in the mud in multiple scenes. And it turns out there actually were aliens and they descend to enslave everyone and harvest their organs. No! That last one was also a lie! But I kinda wish it wasn’t, because this movie needs a little livening up.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? File It Takes a Village under the Wacky Townsfolk Comedy subgenre, inspired by the fine British tradition of movies like The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain, Waking Ned Devine, and all those – except watered down a bit to make it more treacly.
Performance Worth Watching: Notably, de-facto leads Barcis and Seniuk are veterans of dozens of Polish productions, the former starring in Kieslowski’s Dekalog films and the latter in hit 1970s TV series Being Forty (Czterdziestolatek). But the standout in the Village cast is Trzepiecinska, the newcomer to the illustrious No Pressure Collection who puts some memorably genial flavor and warmth into her performance.
Sex And Skin: None.
Our Take: Oh no. Will Halina lose the farm. We’re all on pins and needles. Can’t handle all the tension and suspense. The thought of this old woman being unable to pass the land on to her daughter and granddaughter. It’s unthinkable – unthinkable that It Takes a Village will deviate from predictable norms of feelgood storytelling. The movie is far from objectionable, though; it’s formulaic and silly, but it frontloads goofy goodwill and cheeriness, and has nary a mean-spirited cell in its body. American audiences consistently devour this kind of escapist Hallmark stuff – perhaps out of a need for escapism, or an excuse to quaff wine – so why wouldn’t Polish viewers do the same? Netflix wouldn’t have greenlit a sequel to No Pressure if it didn’t draw viewers.
The issue with Village, though, is its lack of a narrative focal point. It’s a scattering of subplots trying to pass as an ensemble comedy, piling up developments for a big ol’ third-act RESOLVE-OFF. Theoretically, anyway. Not everything reaches resolution, especially the overarching dramatic conceit that the Bodzki residents have been scamming the populace by hard-selling their crop-circle snake oil. One assumes people shrugged it off and went on to the next meme or whatever.
So what you expect to be a rip-the-lid-off plot is diluted into various concerns regarding infidelity, debt relief and the state of various characters’ hearts. Interspersed are hit-and-miss jokes about the cop who loves giant pastries, and the clergyman who’s obsessed with passing the collection plate (because he blew up the church while distilling moonshine, one of the very few bits with any real comedic bite). It’s likeable enough – gentle, inoffensive, corny and sentimental, but not too sentimental, existing more for the jokes than the tepid emotions on display. One of the running bits is Oliwia’s anxiety about her recipes, because for some reason, everything tastes bland to her. That ends up being our biggest emotional access point to this movie, because it all tastes pretty bland to us, too.
Our Call: Amiable but undemanding, It Takes a Village exists in aggressively Just Fine territory. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
