Stream It Or Skip It: ‘It’s All Right!’ On Disney+, A Brazilian Romantic Comedy About A Man Whose Life Ambitions Change After Meeting A Fascinating Singer

On streaming, it sometimes feels like writers expand movie-length premises into eight- or ten-episode seasons. But sometimes a series is more or less movie-length, just broken up into three or four episodes. A new Brazilian rom-com is one of those kinds of shows.

IT’S ALL RIGHT!: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A young man looks straight ahead and says, “There are many kinds of success: Professional success, financial success, love success… I’m a great example of how to fail all of them.”

The Gist: Pedro (Pedro Calais) is making this speech to no one, as his roommates point out. They’re at a party at Studio 447 in São Paulo, and Pedro is lamenting the fact that most of the people there are from the city’s art community, with their “too cool for school” vibes.

But Ana (Ana Caetano) puts out a different aura. As he’s noodling around in the upstairs studio, they meet and immediately hit it off. She seems to be with this obnoxious actor named Vitão (Vitão), who invites him to come play downstairs, where Ana and him are both going to sing.

Ana’s singing and playing generates feelings in Pedro he hasn’t felt in awhile; he even compares her eyes to the droopy eyes of her basset hound, but in an admiring way. After Vitão sings, he invites Pedro to play, but Pedro, afraid of embarrassment, leaves instead.

At home, he writes a song inspired by Ana. The next day, hungover and tired, he scrambles to get to the record label where he works as an intern. There, he overhears his boss talking to Toni (Toni Garrido), who is the head of the label’s São Paulo office ; Toni is looking for the next big summer hit, since the label hasn’t generated a hit song in awhile and jobs might be at stake if he doesn’t find another hit.

Who he wants to sign is Ana and her friends Agnes (Agnes Nunes) and Julia (Julia Mestre), who produced a viral song and video and then set up Studio 744. Ana has resisted, despite the entreaties of Gita (Gita Delavy), the genius teen who seems to be their de facto manager; she wants complete creative control.

Toni sees a clip of Ana singing at the last party and Pedro’s boss notices that Pedro’s in it. Toni has an idea: If Pedro can hang out with Ana more and convince her to sign with their label, Toni will sign Pedro to a recording contract.

He goes to the next party with his work buddy Clara (Clara Buarque), and of course talks to Ana like they’re now old buddies. When he’s asked to sing, this time he accepts and debuts the song he wrote about her, which impresses Ana and everyone else there.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The story in It’s All Right! (original title: Tá Tudo Certo) is somewhat reminiscent of the movie Once.

Our Take: The story arc of It’s All Right feels like it’s more from a movie than it would be a TV series. The fact that the season consists of 4 episodes that are 28-35 minutes doesn’t dissuade us of this notion. It feels like a 2-hour romcom with a lot of music, broken up into four episodes.

What that means is that the romance between Pedro and Ana is going to likely move along the same beats most romcom movies do: Meet cute, fall for each other, run into conflict, get past conflict and live happily ever after. The last part will determine if this show is built for multiple seasons or not.

Creator Felipe Simas keeps things pretty simple, leaning on the relative charms of Calais and Caetano. The dialogue flows naturally, and the chemistry between the two leads is palpable. By the end of the first episode, the situation and complications are set, which is just fine with us.

The music also happens to be pretty catchy, especially the song that Pedro writes after he first meets Ana. If you’re going to have musical breaks in a romcom, the songs better be good. We’re not sure if they’re all original to the series, but it really doesn’t matter; they don’t distract from the story and even add to it, which isn’t always the case with shows like this.

Sex and Skin: None. This is more a romantic story than anything else.

Parting Shot: Pedro finishes his song and everyone, especially Ana, is duly impressed.

Sleeper Star: Vitão is appropriately douchey as his self-named character (in fact, every character here is named after the actor playing him or her).

Most Pilot-y Line: As smart as Gita is, why is a 13-year-old managing a singing group and not going to school? Shouldn’t she be going to university or something if she’s such a genius?

Our Call: STREAM IT. While It’s All Right! is a pretty simple, straightforward story, the charming leads make it worth the quick watch.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.