AmeriQua (retitled EuroTrapped for home media and streaming) is a 2012 Italian-American romantic comedy[1] road movie[6][7][8] filmed in English and Italian,[4] directed by Giovanni Consonni and Marco Bellone, their debut feature,[9] starring Bobby Kennedy III, who also wrote the original screenplay, loosely based on his experiences during his time in Italy.

Charlie (Bobby Kennedy) is an American hard-partying slacker and recent college graduate whose wealthy parents (Alec Baldwin and Catherine Mary Stewart) cut him off with a cheque for $5000 and an ultimatum to get a job.

Lele takes Charlie under his wing and introduces him to his eccentric group of friends, like Badoo (Gianlucca Bazzoli [it]), a scraggly "gutter punk" (punkabbestia), and "Il Pisa" (Giuseppe Sanfelice [it]), an insatiable whoremonger.

It turns out the van Charlie escaped in had something important belonging to the ill-tempered Don Farina, who, exasperated with his underboss Vito, threatens to kill him unless he produces results.

Vito threatens Jaroslav and Il Nero in turn and the trio finally track Charlie to Bologna... Robert (Bobby) Kennedy III began writing at a young age, winning an award for a screenplay for a film noir in high school: "I was kind of hooked at that point.

[12] It is loosely autobiographical,[13] based on his experiences as a "broke student" in Italy,[14] working various jobs like waiting tables or tending bar to support himself[8] during his study abroad in Bologna in 2005, where he met the "stock of wild characters" who populate the film, and where he "found himself in weird situations.

"[10] After graduating from Brown University,[15] Kennedy started writing down "ideas, little scenes, bits of dialogue," inspired by living in "this classic dirty student apartment in Italy, with a really intense group of characters coming in and out all the time.

[16] Attendees at the reception included director Ron Howard and actors Alec Baldwin and Glenn Close; Gualteri, the founder of the TicketOne concert ticket buying service, had no real connection to the world of filmmaking.

[12] Marin Jo Finerty, who plays Vicky's best friend, Elsy, is an American who came to Italy to study at the age of 14, and called her character "a little bit of a bitch" and a precisina.

[22] Badoo (portrayed by Gianluca Bazzoli [it]) is an anarchist who believes in the elimination of both national and international legal frameworks, prisons, religious dogma; his more eccentric notions include the "illumination of only the walk symbols on all city corners, a complete moratorium on personal hygiene, a clothes optional society and, above all, the abolition of money.

[24] Vito Facciolla, who had played criminals before in non-comedic films, said the directors chose him, Matteo Azchirvani [it], and Edoardo Pesceas [it] because they worked well together as a trio as Vito and his henchmen,[25] the thick-moustached, confrontational Jaroslav, an "asshole" from an Eastern European country who can barely make himself understood in Neapolitan dialect, and often lapses into a Slavic language, particularly when cursing,[26] and Il Nero, a harmonica-playing rockabilly type and a man of "slow action".

[25][27] One evening in Bologna, the trio had some time to themselves and, still in costume, were being mistaken by passersby for genuine "shady" characters, so they decided to go to local pubs and bars pretending to ask for protection money, which led to the police being called.

[25] Michele Bottini, who played Sergio, steward at Don Ferracane's restaurant, was also the film's acting coach; Kennedy and Gabellone spent a few weeks at his house in Varese, where he instructed them on "stage presence, annunciation and spritz drinking".

[12] AmeriQua was released on DVD under the title EuroTrapped by Screen Media on 17 September 2013, described on DiscDish as "a strange little English-language production from Italy... with a lot of money behind it".

[53] While it was evident that the filmmakers had very good intentions, for Alessandro Antinori, the film is disappointingly "amateurish", the product of a rough script and banal dialogue, particularly as delivered by the non-professional protagonists, Kennedy and Gabellone, and the Italian dubbing was even more embarrassing.

[54] Comparing the film unfavourably to L'Auberge espagnole, whose director Cédric Klapisch also draws on his student experience in a foreign country, Antinori argues that AmeriQua fails to achieve its primary objective of getting past American stereotypical perceptions of Italians.

[54] Assigning it a rating of 3/10, Giancarlo Usai goes further: the film is an unforgivable attempt to overturn Italian cinepanettone stereotypes with a sloppy nonsensical script consisting of a series of poorly paced, disconnected sketches.