When in Rome Review
Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 02.01.2010
It's certainly no Holiday.
Directed by: Mark Steven Johnson Written by: David Diamond & David Weissman
Starring: Kristen Bell - Beth Harper Josh Duhamel - Nick Beamon Jon Heder - Lance Dax Shepard - Gale Will Arnett - Antonio Alexis Dziena - Joan Anjelica Huston - Celeste Danny DeVito - Al Russo Don Johnson - Beth's Father Kate Micucci - Stacy Bobby Moynihan - Puck Kristen Schaal - Ilona Lee Pace - Brady Sacks Alexa Havins - Lacey
Running Time: 91 minutes
Rated PG-13 for some suggestive content.
Rome may not be considered on Paris's level when considering romantic Meccas, but it is certainly close…especially where Hollywood is considered. The capital of Italy has long featured in cinematic tales of love, such as Roman Holiday, The Best of Youth and Three Girls in the Fountain. The exotic setting, ancient architecture, luxurious accents and famous art alone makes for a wonderful romantic setting, one the movie studios have always been ready to mine for evocative imagery in their films. Not every film set in the country can be an Audrey Hepburn-level classic, but every now and then one strikes a chord with audiences. With that in mind, along comes Disney with its latest romantic comedy When in Rome. Starring Kristen Bell, Josh Duhamel, Danny DeVito, Dax Shepard, Jon Heder and Will Arnett and directed by Mark Steven Johnson, the film opens this weekend in an attempt to take advantage of a romantic comedy-less marketplace before they start to arrive in force next month.
The film stars Bell as Beth, the youngest curator at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Beth is a workaholic who is married to her job; as such, she is of course terribly unsuccessful in love. After a humiliating incident at her work involving an ex-boyfriend, Beth comes home to have her sister Joan (Dziena) drop by and say she's getting married to an Italian guy she's known for about two weeks. Beth is of course skeptical but promises to be there, and takes time off in the midst of preparing for the most important event in the museum's fundraising year to travel to Rome for the wedding. Once there, she meets Nick (Duhamel), the best man. The two Americans hit it off, but after a moment where she suspects some unchivalrous behavior from him, she gets drunk and decides to steal coins out of the "Fountain of Love" outside the chapel. Soon after, a quartet of suitors (Heder, Shepard, Arnett & DeVito) begins following her around obsessively, because it's their coins she took and magic is in the air. She finds herself trying to avoid the four men under the fountain's spell in favor of Nick, but when she comes to suspect that he may be affected by the spell also, she has to figure out how to make it right and learn whether love is real or just a trick.
When in Rome has a rather ignominious lineage. Its writers are David Diamond and David Weissman, the writing team behind last year's contender for worst comedy of the year, Old Dogs. It is very, very loosely inspired by the 1954 film Three Coins in the Fountain; by inspired, it is meant that there is a fountain and falling In love involved, and there is virtually no other connection. The management team who approved the movie no longer work for Disney, and one has to wonder if approving this script for a big-budget feature film didn't at least have a little to do with that. Diamond and Weissman have proven themselves as inept screenwriters in the past before, and this script is no different. It takes a rather forced gimmick and tries to apply it to the romantic comedy formula with tremendously unfunny results. The gags are old hat and the characters are two-dimensional at best; Beth's suitors equate to cheesy concepts without any depth to them. Heder is a Criss Angel-like street magician; Shepard is a self-absorbed male model. The other two are Arnett's tortured artist and DeVito's sausage mogul. None of them have anything remotely resembling depth to them and are one-note caricatures...and distinctly unfunny caricatures at that. Similarly, all the supporting character have almost nothing in the way of substance to them; Beth's boss is a cheap rip-off of a hundred other hard-nosed bosses we've seen before and her assistant barely even has enough detail to her to be considered a character. Nick's friend is the kind of goofy, semi-nerdy best friend that's become a staple of lame, cookie-cutter comedy.
The main characters are a bit more developed, but even they are more archetypes than people. Beth is a workaholic who can't keep a relationship, something that's been seen more times each year than explosions in Michael Bay movies while Nick is the charming guy who suddenly becomes a hideous klutz for no apparent reason other than the fact that he's in love. These are gags that serve no apparent reason other than to pretend there is comedy in a situation that would otherwise be completely humorless. Diamond and Weissman at least manage to avoid setting Nick and Beth up as people who hate each other right off the bat a la The Ugly Truth, The Proposal and a host of other such films, but they then get stuck into finding half-hearted reasons for the two to stay apart. Meanwhile, they fail to find a single joke that inspires humor; even the one original part, a date at a themed diner, is drastically unfunny. A waiter who wears night-vision goggles and hangs around listening to conversations isn't funny; it's creepy. That kind of hackneyed humor is what pervades the script. It's clunky, half-thought out and a chore to sit through.
If the script is half-thought out, even less is put into the execution. Mark Steven Johnson is the man behind the lens and while he is currently best known for being the man behind Marvel Comics adaptations Ghost Rider and Daredevil, he's also written screenplays for the comedies Grumpy Old Men and its sequel. Johnson has clearly forgotten his comic roots, as here he makes no real headway in making something filmable out of the project. The scenes that take place in Rome look cheap and half-done; the Fountain of Love is obviously from a sound stage. Meanwhile, he films the physical comedy with a complete lack of knowledge toward what makes physical comedy funny. There's a manner to slapstick that can be done to be effective and many filmmakers manage this just fine; Johnson seems to think it is the falling down and walking into trees that is funny and not the important part around it. That seems to be the primary problem with this whole affair; the filmmakers know the situations that are funny but not how to make those situations funny. A street magician who uses magic tricks to woo someone can be funny, but there is a fine line between letting it go from funny to annoying. Same with a self-absorbed male model. Jokes about encased meats can be funny, but lines like "There's no emotion that can't be expressed with sausage" are certainly not the way to do it. In every measurable way, Johnson completely misses the mark.
If nothing else, at least When in Rome has a star who tries earnestly to make it work. Kristen Bell has been on a roll in the past few years in films; her romantic comedies Couples Retreat and Forgetting Sarah Marshall were both solid successes and she earned the hearts of fanboys with…well, Fanboys. This is her first time in a big-budget feature since Pulse that she's been the sole lead however, and not part of an ensemble. Bell is a charming and likeable actress, and she does her best to make Beth a character the audience can care about. Sadly, she doesn't fully succeed because there's just too much for her to overcome. Bell has the stage presence and the look, and is willing to take risks to make a character succeed; unfortunately she doesn't have the wherewithal to make dumb lines like "When I love a man as much as my job, that's how I'll know he's the one" work. Meanwhile, Josh Duhamel is charming enough for us to believe that Bell could fall for him, but he has no talent for physical humor. Bell and Duhamel summon a faint amount of chemistry between each other, but are hamstrung by the forced ways they are split up too quickly so the romance doesn't seem credible in any way.
Far worse than the leads are the supporting cast, who slave away in those thankless roles and add nothing worthwhile. Dax Shepard is amusing the first time you see his model character, and you have to appreciate the actor's willingness to look ridiculous in a women's jogging outfit in one scene, but he very quickly becomes grating on the nerves rather than funny. Jon Heder shows how little he has advanced as a comedian by channeling elements of Napoleon Dynamite, but not enough to inspire thoughts of that film. He does bring Efren Ramirez, better known as Pedro, along for the ride though in a cameo that makes no sense and disjoints the movie even further. Will Arnett overacts his accent—but at least it's on purpose and he handles one of the few funny physical comedy moments in the film. Angelica Huston and Danny DeVito look embarrassed to be there and clearly need better agents, while Don Johnson shows up twice as Beth's father, for no other apparent reason than that he's Don Johnson; his character doesn't even have a name, which perhaps says something about how important the character is.
Once the movie hits its end zone run, all logic flies completely out the window. Electrical storms fly just because it would be ironic for Duhamel's once-electrified character to risk being struck by lightning; some of the characters drive a tiny Italian car through the streets of New York like they're packed into a clown car. A poker chip rolls all the way down several stories worth of a winding circular ramp without falling over. The story seems to resolve, then throws in an extra twist for no other apparent reason than so that they can get the film extended out to the ninety minute mark that makes for an "acceptable" film. Unfortunately, this film is acceptable in length only; by any other measure, it is as far from that as it gets.
The 411: It would be unfair to call When in Rome a failure of a romantic comedy. The reason for that is that it never once even comes close to registering as a comedy or a romantic story. There are attempts to be funny of course, but the screenwriters and director Mark Steven Johnson know only what scenes can makes a film funny as opposed to how to accomplish that with those scenes. Meanwhile, the romance is stilted and awkward, forced into conflict only because the story demands it and thus failing to draw interest. It is a purely by-the-numbers presentation with a forced semi-supernatural gimmick, a series of hokey, unbelievable and unlikeable supporting characters and lazy, uninspired direction on Johnson's behalf. Kristen Bell tries ably, but she can't rise above the material and the supporting cast fails to achieve even the lowered expectations the material sets for them. With pointless slapstick, stupid gags and few that seem to care about making anything of quality here, the result is about what one might expect, only somehow far worse. January has found an early contender for the worst romantic comedy of the year, and it will be hard to beat this one out by year's end.
