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When in Rome is the cinematic equivalent of gorging yourself with a bag of candy. At first it seems tasty, pleasurable even, and goes down easily enough. But then things start to turn and you start to feel worse with every bite until you’re sick to your stomach. Ultimately, you find yourself wondering why you picked up the bag in the first place. When in Rome is exactly like that. What could have been a throwaway and perhaps mildly entertaining romantic comedy is instead a tedious and plodding film that has zero charm and no personality.
Beth (Kristen Bell) is a career-obsessed curator at the Guggenheim Museum. As is often the case for leads in these movies, her personal life is non-existent. On the eve of the biggest opening of her career, Beth’s younger sister announces she’s getting married in Rome and Beth is off to Italy for what she hopes will be a quick, uneventful weekend so she can get back and oversee the big event (the opening). At the wedding she meets the handsome and charming Nick (Josh Duhamel) and begins to wonder if he might just be the one. But, after seeing him with another woman, Beth gets drunk, swears off romance, frolics in a fountain, and then makes the questionable (or, at least, somewhat silly) decision to remove five coins from the fountain to save those who threw them in wishing for love from a life of disappointment. Of course, since this is a fabled magic fountain, the owners of the rescued coins have a spell cast on them and fall madly in love with poor Beth and follow her back to New York and try to win her heart. Unfortunately, Beth just can’t seem to forget about Nick and, apparently, he has fallen for her too. Or has he? It appears as though one of the coins she pilfered belongs to him so his feelings for her may be less than genuine.
While this may sound like a clever concept for an effective romantic comedy, such a movie never materializes. The setup in New York and the wedding in Rome, which takes up almost half of the film, is easily the best part of the film (though it still has its flaws). Once the story shifts back to the States the plot become nothing more than a series of poorly executed tired romantic comedy clichés held together by frivolous slapstick that leads to an unrewarding finale that you’ll probably see coming somewhere around the film’s first ten minutes.
Director Mark Steven Johnson, whose previous films include the awful Ghost Rider, the disappointing Daredevil, and the much better Simon Birch, directs the film in a tedious connect-the-dots style. There’s nothing original here, which wouldn’t be that bad if the movie was at least entertaining or the plot moved entertainingly along. But, writers David Diamond and David Weissman (Family Man, Evolution, and the horrid Old Dogs) serve up a script that’s a laborious hodgepodge of romantic comedy constructs. The end result of which is a comedy with no character and very few laughs.
Kristen Bell, who was so effortlessly wonderful in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, seems completely wasted here. There’s a nice chemistry between her and Duhamel but that’s lost in the plodding script and overall lack of direction. Like everything else about the film, the four lovelorn men (the well-to-do businessman Al (Danny DeVito), the struggling artist Antonio (Will Arnett), street magician Lance (Jon Heder), and self-obsessed male model Gale (Dax Shepard)) vying for Beth’s attention start off with some promise but quickly become stock characters that ineffectively push the film to its rather uninspired conclusion via tired slapstick. If these men had had more personality and had forced the audience to actually care if they had a chance with Ms. Bell then they might have worked. But, then the whole construct of the film would have had to have been changed (believe me, that wouldn’t have been a bad thing).
Near the end of When in Rome, as the story tries to ramble along to its end, DeVito delivers a line that goes something like, if he and his three compatriots really love Beth as much as they say they do then they should want her to be happy even if her happiness doesn’t involve them. It’s a touching moment that could have worked in a more thoughtful or whimsical film, but, like the rest of When in Rome it’s a misfire that doesn’t feel honest or genuine.
Rating: ONE BONE
Reviewed by Mike Tyrkus (MovieRetriever.com Film Critic & Editor)
Release Date: January 29, 2010
Rating: PG-13
Starring: Kristen Bell, Josh Duhamel, Will Arnett, Alexis Dziena, Jon Heder, Dax Shepard, Danny DeVito, Anjelica Huston, Kate Micucci, Bobby Moynihan, and Lee Pace
Director: Mark Steven Johnson
Writer: David Diamond and David Weissman
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