To Rome with Love

For most of the past decade Woody Allen has been revisiting old themes in new places. He writes a witty script, hires a good cameramen, has great actors flock to him because he writes great lines for them and directs the film efficiently. So we have travel vistas that he has even been putting the city's name in, like VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA, MIDNIGHT IN Paris and now the Fellini-esque TO ROME WITH LOVE.

If you get the idea that I look down on these efforts, let me say I enjoy them very much. Mr. Allen has reached an age and ability in his craft where he can do things easily and smoothly, so that the three farces that make up this anthology set in the Eternal City offer some wonderful excuses to show off the city. My favorite is the one about Roberto Benigni, an ordinary man who suddenly finds himself a celebrity upon whom the media hang. His bewilderment is a lovely, comic performance. However, if you prefer the one about the retired record producer who makes the machetunim an opera sensation in the shower or the the one about the young temptress, that's fine too.

Although nowhere near Woody Allen's great films like Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and her Sisters and Midnight in Paris, To Rome with Love is still a charming, and entertaining film. Some have called the film, Woody Allen's worst film, and I simply don't agree. (His worse film is Scoop) The whole cast works nicely and all the performances are all around great. My favorite being Judy Davis, she stole the show for me.

I found some of the scenes rushed and haphazardly constructed and some of the dialogue overwritten and under-rehearsed. The film at times, felt very lazy and a bit fake, at times. At 112 Mimutes, To Rome with Love is a good 20 minutes longer than most Woody Allen films, and it shows. The movie was overlong and a bit boring at times. There weren't enough charming and funny scenes to compensate for it's running time. Some scenes should've definitely been cut. Woody Allen's latest effort is flawed, but definitely not a bad film, as most are saying.

7/10

While not great Woody Allen – it's neither profound, moving nor funny enough for that title, it is quite enjoyable.

The film is made up of four intercut short stories, that share little other than the fact they're set in Rome. Some have fantasy elements, some are more absurdist, others more straightforward character farce.

But somehow, though they don't make much of a logical grouping, the whole thing is lighthearted and fun enough that it seems grumpy to pick on it.

Sure some jokes fall flat and some ideas seem unfulfilled, but a lot of it is wonderfully acted and cleverly written. And at a time when so many comedies are aimed only at 15 year olds, even 2nd tier Woody, simply telling playfully comic tales, is a welcome sight.

You kinda always know what you'll get with Woody Allen films by this point, which is that for every work that he does that knocks it out of the park (Match Point, Midnight in Paris), he'll come back and then... make a film that just stays as a single or double, to use baseball terms (i.e. Scoop, and this film). To Rome with Love is another "Woody's European City Tour" that follows London, Barcelona and of course Paris, and with Rome he pays tribute by doing one of those Italian anthology comedies (I haven't seen a lot of them frankly, but I'm thinking like back in the 60's with Boccaccio 62), and there are four stories that Woody could also have made individual films. Well, two would have been potentially amazing if they had the right focus (one of them, not so much, the time it has here is fine). Let's quickly rundown:

Woody himself returns for the first time on screen since Scoop (a little too old to be the romantic lead anymore, aside from, say, married to Judy Davis), and he and his wife go to see their daughter, played by Allison Pill, who is set to get married to Michelangelo. His parents are simple Roman folk, the father a mortician... who is also an amazing opera singer, but the catch is that he can only sing great in the shower (don't we all?) so Woody makes a trick: have him sing in the shower - on STAGE! Alec Baldwin plays a guy who, I think, looks back on his younger self as an impressionable architect (Jesse Eisenberg, very Woody-esque surrogate, but plays his own strengths well as well) who has a new romantic interest in the super-neurotic actress Ellen Page plays (a different turn for her that I had fun watching, though intentionally annoying as a character). An Italian couple are in love and are unfortunately separated and, through wacky misunderstandings, wind up with other partners over the course of one day. And Roberto Benigni is a regular guy chased by the paparazzi. Why? Why not?

Woody juggles between these stories and, the worst I can say about it is, it has an air of a sitcom to it. There's some misunderstandings and usually around fame or love or sex, or all of the above, and it's not too deep. Well, maybe the Baldwin/Eisenberg plot has some poignancy about a Man of the World who looks back on his youthful indiscretion, or would-be one, and there is a lot of humor to be mined. Hell, it's great to see Benigni have fun and be actually funny again in his premise, where he starts to go down deeper in the rabbit hole of fame. And while it's the weakest plot of all with the two Italian lovers split apart, when Penelope Cruz comes on screen for her brief time she's sexy, fun, and intelligent in her acting. Even Woody Allen himself, telling a lot of the brand of old, semi-corny jokes (but ALWAYS with a knowing wit and punchline) is amusing.

But when comedy works, it works, and there's a lot of stuff that worked here for me more than it didn't. Just seeing the old Italian man singing in the shower on stage (and applying/washing off Pagliaci make- up!) is a gag that only the most cynical would turn off on. It's a master filmmaker having fun, and a jazz clarinetist (yeah, I'm going there) noodling around on his instrument in a cinematic sort of way. I think for the summer season, which has passed know, it's a fine way to spend an afternoon or evening, not to mention with a wonderful cast by older-and-young Hollywood players and Italian not-so-well-known folks. Just not in an OMG YOU MUST SEE THIS IT WILL WIN AN Oscar sort of experience.

Rome must be one of the most photogenic cities in the world, no matter how you look at it or who is looking. The Rome of Fellini with all its magic corners or Pasolini's Rome with its poetic darkness. Woody Allen's Rome is pure postcard glitter. What a let down. This is Allen's weakest script so far. Seems undecided and downright lazy. The tribute to Fellini's "The White Sheik" verges on theft and the Italian actors delivering their lines in Italian look and sound as participants of a provincial amateur hour. Even Oscar winner Roberto Benigni gives a pale and tired life to a thoroughly underwritten character. Allen himself is very good as is Judy Davis as his wife. But, I wonder what was in the writer/director's mind. I believe that in Allen's filmography from best to worst, To Rome With Love will appear very near the bottom. But, let's not despair, the master is already prepping his next flick.