To Rome with Love - But Not Like

I learned today that as much as you can love Woody Allen, and love Rome, and love Pagliacci, and love Penelope Cruz, you can’t love Woody’s newest movie, “To Rome with Love”. In fact, you can barely like it.

I went to the theater with the best of expectations. I couldn’t believe that the film had gotten such mixed reviews (46% favorable from Rotten Tomatoes). After all, this was Woody’s follow up to “Midnight in Paris” one of his best efforts in years, in my opinion. That film had such an impact on me – so permeated my consciousness – that I spent much of my time walking around Paris in April humming "Parlez-moi d'amour", the song that played under the action in much of the film (and, interestingly, the “other” song in “Casablanca”). “To Rome…” was going to be another Woody European convection, the next take on his recent oeuvre (“Match Point”, “Scoop”, “Cassandra’s Dream”, “Vicky Christina Barcelona” and, most memorably, “Midnight in Paris”).

For the first ten minutes of the film I sat there with a grin and great hope. When Jerry (Woody) is first introduced as the neurotic nebbish whining about air travel as he jetted to Paris in Business Class with his wife (the wonderful Judy Davis), I thought, “Great, this will be a combination of the best of the old and new Woody”. Unfortunately, the next 85 minutes were all downhill.

Let’s be clear: there were a number of funny bits and funny lines. But these tidbits of fun were overtaken by an implausible plot line and some really annoying performances, particularly Jesse Eisenberg’s who was almost impossible to watch.

Allen’s attempt to portray the vapidity of popular culture through the rise and fall of Leopoldo, the Roberto Benigni character who became a paparazzi favorite and the most popular person in Italy for no apparent reason, and then just as mysteriously fell from his pedestal when another non-entity attracted the attention of the pop-culture mob, was painful. Compare this with Peter Sellers in "Being There".

The Alec Baldwin role as Eisenberg’s conscience/alter-ego was just annoying.  And the Ellen Page character, Eisenberg’s girl friend’s best friend, an out of work actress who steals Eisenberg through guile and pseudo-intellectualism only to drop him when she gets a part in a movie, is transparent and obvious.

Having said all that, the idea that our best singing is done in the shower – and the playing out of that idea – is a hoot. Mark my words, you will never experience  a more bizarre, and funny, performance of Pagliacci than the one that Allen pulls off.

In spite of all the negatives, go to see the film, if for no other reason that when you leave the theater, the dominant thought you'll have is, “When does the next plane leave for Rome, and are there any seats left?” Clearly, the one thing Woody couldn’t screw up is Italy.