When in Rome Movie Review
Tuesday, January 31st, 2012
When in Rome
My 0-10 rating: 5
Genre: Comedy
Director: Mark Steven Johnson
Screenwriter: David Diamond, David Weissman
Starring: Kristen Bell, Josh Duhamel, will Arnett, Alexis Dziena, Jon Heder, Danny DeVito
Time: 1 hr., 28 min.
Rating: PG-13 (some suggestive content)
A featherweight confection for those moments in which you just don’t want your brain to be disturbed, it really tends to give chick flicks a bad name. it won’t annoy you at all, unless you regret the loss of 88 precious minutes of your time in this life.
On its rapid way to DVD, when in Rome, which simply appropriates the lamest, most trivial aspects of much more legitimate romance comedies since the classic 1953 Roman Holiday, begins its tiptoe around the country for an undiscriminating female audience.
Saved from oblivion only by some amusingly quirky performances by a full-of-himself Dax Shepard character, plus an energetic Danny DeVito, a bit nutsy Jon Heder and will Arnett, the film never resorts to substance. Kristen Bell is undeniably cute, but most definitely no Meg Ryan. She starts with a certain appealing personality and never builds on it from her first scene.
The innocent plot has admittedly some merry whimsy to it but aspires to a whole lot of nothing.
Beth (Kristen Bell), an ambitious young Guggenheim Museum junior art curator, disillusioned with romance after being dumped one time too many, decides, right before a big fund-raiser, to take advantage of the timing of her sister’s (Alexis Dziena) suddenly announced wedding to a handsome suitor in Rome, to go on a weekend trip to attend it.
Once in Rome, at the wedding, she meets hunky Nick (Josh Duhamel), a New York Daily News sportswriter, who’s the former college roommate of her sister’s new husband (Luca Calvani). Nick actually may already be attached. a move he makes on another babe indicates that things may or may not be looking good for Beth.
Suddenly in a rebellious, and slightly sloshed mood, she haughtily grabs some magic coins from a fountain of love. this, in the fountain’s own magic, touches off an attraction to the very four guys who originally tossed those coins, all of them, of course, New Yorkers, all of whom now follow her home to New York. Nick having noted her being the object of so many male affections, also goes after her.
Those other four are a quirky group indeed. There’s a zany street magician (Jon Heder), a sausage magnate (Danny DeVito), a love-loving painter (Will Arnett) and a full-of-himself model (Dax Shepard). As they do their amorous pursuits, poor Nick has no idea why she’s now rather cool to him.
One sequence, which should have scored on the laughs meter but doesn’t, is when Nick and Beth are in a blackout cafe in which the diners are blind to their food or each other. But the humor is cheap and unimaginative.
Duhamel has a barely serviceable comprehension of comic timing but he’s OK in his character’s modesty. and check out Heder who, as an in-joke, is paired again with Efren Ramirez with whom he played in Napoleon Dynamite. Danny DeVito is given somewhat more dimension than the other oddballs. But yes, Rome is shown in its most romantic moods.
This is, granted, a cheery little — very little — film effort.
