2 stars (out of four)
Woody Allen’s tour of Europe continues with To Rome With
Love, a collection of vignettes about
tourists and locals in Rome that feels less like a love letter to the city than
a justification for Woody’s traveling. The film, though not without its amusing
moments, is an awkward jumble of comic sketches that fail to add up to a
cohesive whole.
We meet Hayley (Alison Pill), a New Yorker on holiday for
the summer, who asks for directions from Michelangelo (Flavio Parenti), a
dashing Roman. After no time at all (more specifically, after a brief
sight-seeing montage), the two are engaged and arrange a meeting of the future
in-laws. Mr. Allen himself returns to acting playing his usual crotchety self
and delivering some stale one-liners as Jerry, Hayley’s father.
Jerry is a retired classical music producer and when he
overhears Michelangelo’s father (opera singer Fabio Armiliato) belting in the
shower, he insists the man has a gift that must be shared with the world. This idea
is met with sarcastic scorn from Jerry’s wife (Judy Davis) who shrewdly observes Jerry is
simply bored and looking for an opportunity to relive the glory days. This
storyline eventually peters out into a one-joke bit that is worth a chuckle the
first time you see it but quickly gets old.
A characteristically animated Roberto Benigni stars in a
similarly one-note story as an everyday joe who inexplicably becomes a national
celebrity overnight. Paparazzi mob him outside his home: “What did you eat for
breakfast?” they ask him in an excited commotion. “Do you take your bread
toasted or untoasted?” And so on, and so on.
In another episode, a newlywed couple, Milly (Alessandra
Mastronardi) and Antonio (Alessandro Tiberi), get separated and subsequently
embark on parallel sexual indiscretions; Milly with a movie star (Antonio
Albanese) and Antonio with prostitute (a criminally underused Penélope Cruz).
Their stories meander for a while in mildly farcical territory but don’t really
go anywhere.
The only narrative that does progress and develop an actual
arc features Jesse Eisenberg as Jack, a young architect living in Rome with his
girlfriend Sally (a barely seen Greta Gerwig). Sally has invited her best
friend Monica (Ellen Page), a notorious seductress, to stay over their place
and visit. “Don’t fall in love with her,” she tells Jack, which is really
another way of saying, “You’re going to fall in love with her.”
Eavesdropping on the developing love triangle is John (Alec
Baldwin), a famed architect Jack recognizes on the street and invites to his
apartment. John, as it turns out, once lived on this very block when he was
Jack’s age. Indeed, Jack may even be a young incarnation of himself. (Or is
John a future incarnation of Jack?) At any rate, Woody Allen has fun letting
John stroll in and out of scenes like a one-man Greek chorus in Jack’s mind,
warning him of the trouble he is about to get into while also conceding the
inevitable. He was young once too and easily tempted by charming girls like
Monica.
Jesse Eisenberg and Ellen Page are well suited to the
fast-talking neuroses of Mr. Allen’s characters and though their dialogue is far
from Mr. Allen’s best writing, the pair have a way of making their lines sound
snappier than they actually are. This is Woody Allen Lite (he has crafted much more subtle and interesting tales of infidelity in the past) but it is still
the best offering here.
The title of this movie is curious. Woody Allen’s last film,
Midnight in Paris, told an enchanting
story set in the City of Lights that also found plenty of time to indulge in
the scenery. It evoked the magic of the city (literally) as well as Mr. Allen’s
adoration of it. To Rome With Love
feels obligatory. Often Woody Allen seems to be padding for time and he
overwrites a lot of scenes, beating a joke into the ground or, worse,
explaining why it’s funny. I’ve never been to Rome but I imagine it deserves
better.
- Steve Avigliano, 7/9/12
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