Roman tragedy
When in Rome / Guggenheim museum curator Beth (Kristen Bell from Veronica Mars) finds herself in Rome for her sister’s wedding. After a flirtation with Nick (Josh Duhamel) doesn’t work out, she drunkenly splashes around the Trevi Fountain, bitterly stealing coins from the water. What she doesn’t realize is that her act of defiance causes the thrower of each stolen coin to hopelessly become smitten with her, and they follow Beth to New York.
Meanwhile, Nick is also infatuated with Beth and he aggressively courts her as well, but she’s convinced she stole one of his coins, too. Even though she’s falling for him, she knows what Nick is feeling isn’t real, only a spell, and she spends the rest of the movie trying to avoid everybody.
That’s the plot for the romantic comedy When in Rome, and while the concept has an appealing sort of magical realism, the execution gets downright torturous. Many of the jokes fall flat; this is the kind of film that concludes with a dance sequence over the end credits, a “cute” gimmick that’s more painful than the accident reel on a Jackie Chan flick. Even though it’s a star vehicle, most of the performers are simply treading water here.
Bell tries to spunk up her part, but her dreadfully un-witty lines make her manic and shrill. Duhamel looks completely confused as to how to act without Transformers bashing each other in the background. He’s one of the very few actors consistently in big-budget films whose main acting influence appears to be Casper Van Dien in Starship Troopers.
Danny DeVito, Will Arnett, and Dax Shepard are on board to play the wacky lovestruck stalkers that follow Beth to the Big Apple, and their talents are all wasted. The majestic Anjelica Huston even has a small role as Beth’s uppity boss and one feels sorry for the woman who once won an Oscar for Prizzi’s Honor. How dishonorable.
Two scenes stand out amid the mess. Jon Heder–Napoleon Dynamite himself–is the last gentlemen caller and he’s an over-enthusiastic amateur magician. Beth finds him lurking in her apartment doing a Houdini stunt and for fans of Heder’s most well-known film, get ready to vote for Pedro. There’s also a truly hilarious sequence set in a dining-in-the-dark restaurant–the lights are completely off and diners eat in pitch black. Kristen Schaal, the schizo fan from Flight of the Conchords, is the establishment’s hostess and she’s creepily odd and endearingly psychotic, lurking near tables in night-vision goggles.
Bizarrely, the director of this film is Mark Steven Johnson, who previously brought us the film adaptations of the heroes Daredevil and Ghost Rider. The Nicolas Cage disaster not-withstanding, the poor man should stick with Marvel Comics.
When in Rome marks the second time in recent memory that we see the famous circular walkway of the Guggenheim used as a pertinent script point. The first was an amazing, innovative shootout in the otherwise boring The International. Sadly, all Rome makes us want to do is Netflix that spectacular gun battle again.
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