Review of When in Rome (2010) by Tino P — 16 Oct 2013

I don't really know what to say about "When in Rome" except that it's bad. Really bad. Ok maybe I can think of a few things to say, but first the plot. Beth (Kristen Bell) is an art curator who is too busy with her work to worry about love or relationships. That is until she is invited to her sister's wedding in Rome. There, she meets Nicholas (Josh Duhamel). The two hit it off immediately until Beth spots Nick kissing another woman. Slightly drunk and jealous, she remembers a story she heard about the "fountain of love". Apparently throwing a coin into the fountain is supposed to bring you true love and picking a coin from the fountain means that the coin's original owner will fall in love with you. Beth picks 5 coins the fountain and soon finds herself being pursued by a group of wacky would-be lovers. Everywhere Beth goes she is quickly followed by Al the rich sausage maker (Danny DeVito), a street magician named Lance who may or may not have actual magical powers (John Heder), an artist named Antonio (Will Arnett) and a narcissistic male model named Gale (Dax Shepard). Back in America Beth reconnects with Nick while dodging the unwanted attention of the original coin owners. Despite the annoying suitors, Beth and Nick fall for each other. But is it true love, or is Nick only in love with Beth because she pulled a poker chip from his game out of the fountain? There are after all, 5 coins and only 4 men pursuing her... how suspicious! If that wasn't enough, Beth is in the middle of planning a big art show and screwing that up could get her fired. What is she going to do?

The film tells you exactly what calibre of humor you can expect within the first 5 minutes when we get not one, but two record scratches and a giant embarrassing misunderstanding between Beth, her ex-boyfriend and all of her co-workers and friends. I'd estimate that one out of every three scenes ends with a pratfall. Someone falls into a hole, gets hit in the head or runs into something constantly in an attempt to end segments of the movie with a laugh. Scenes that don't end with people getting hit over the head sometimes don't make any sense, like the joke was created first and the setup loosely formed so that we could get to the would-be laughs. A perfect example is when Beth and Nick go on a date to a fancy new restaurant. This is one of those gimmicky restaurants that you often see in bad comedies. The catch with this one is that it's completely dark and that the waiters wear night vision goggles. You might be wondering to yourself why I'm picking this scene in particular. "I can see a restaurant like that! The idea would be that you exercise your sense of smell and taste even more that your vision is gone!" Well, you're partially right but here's a question for you then Mr. Smarty pants: why would a restaurant invest thousands of dollars to buy a bunch of night-vision goggles for their waiters instead of a couple of cheap blindfolds for the customers? Are we supposed to believe that the cooks are also making food in complete darkness? If they aren't, light would shine in the room every time the kitchen doors open. For that matter, do the hungry people that walk in just get the whole menu read to them by the waiters? Do they ask you to turn off your cellphone when you walk in because texting would ruin the experience? What if you need to go to the bathroom? What if there's a fire? The answer to these questions "Shut up! This is an opportunity to have Beth and Nick bump into people, spill things and get hurt by other customers that can't see them! Plus this way, we can have the suitors just show up in the restaurant and interrupting the date without Beth seeing them coming! What's that? Well, yeah the suitors will randomly show up with night vision goggles, why do you ask?" This is one of those movies where things just happen without any logic to them so the plot can keep going. Despite the fact that the original coin owners should hate each other (I mean, they're all after the same girl) they always seem to get along just fine and in fact must be carpooling around New York because they almost always show up together to bother Beth at work.

The writing here is just lazy, paddling water while it waits for the running time to reach 90 minutes so it can quickly wrap itself up. There are four scenes where Beth and Nick break up because of a comedic misunderstanding. A bad romantic comedy usually has one, at the most two so this is like the ultimate bad romantic comedy. I'll give you another example of bad writing. You know how in these types of movies they have to give a reason why the very attractive lead is single? Like say Jessica Alba was in a romantic comedy. They don't want to dress her down or give her a real personality trait that would explain why she's single. You would never see her with say, traumatic childhood memories, or a deep depression and because she's so hot, it's not like her looks would be the reason why she can't find a nice guy. Usually they'll use a personality trait as a one-two; a reason why the woman is single and also a "defining characteristic" so they can save themselves the trouble of writing actual people of putting together some actual character development. Some examples include: Being clumsy, being a workaholic, being socially awkward, having a kid/baby, having a psycho ex, wearing her hair in a ponytail and sporting big, goofy glasses (you know, the librarian look) and "refusing to fall in love". Sometimes (and this is when you know your movie is going to stink) they give her a boyfriend that seems nice, but he's cheating behind her back or is just dating her so he can get some tail/get her money/get some kind of revenge on her. Ok, no kid, no psycho ex, no ponytail, no evil boyfriend. It's looking good at first glance but keep going down that list. Is she clumsy? Yes, there's a long joke at the beginning where Beth tries to smash a vase as part of a wedding ritual and ends up hitting someone in the head and smashing a whole bunch of stuff. She is also constantly bumping into things. Next: Socially awkward? Yes, at the same wedding, she gives an awkward speech and because she's constantly being pursued she has to uneasily sneak out of meetings and normal activities to escape the coin owners. Workaholic? Yes, she is obsessed with her job and comments that she is so busy with it that she doesn't have the time to fall in love so that's a double whammy there. Most of the other characters are similarly two-dimensional. Her boss is bitchy and totally unreasonable; the suitors are one-joke characters made to be as distinct from each other as possible while always staying unattractive to the audience; her sister, dumb but in love; Nick, charming, sexy, clumsy and unlucky.

This movie should have worked. Cristen Bell is charming as usual, Josh Duhamel too. Even some of the small parts are well cast, like the waitress at the blind restaurant (check it out, it's Kristen Schaal, the voice of Louise from Bob's Burgers!) and Beth's co-worker Stacy (Kate Micucci). Maybe that's why the film is such a crushing disappointment. There are films with zero budget who have actors who can't act and special effects that aren't very special. You take one look and you know it's only going to get worse from there. Here though, there are some incredibly talented people that are completely because of all of the cheap jokes (including a lazy reference to Napoleon Dynamite). As a final insult, the film's conclusion doesn't even make sense with its own mythology and as a last-ditch effort to have everyone leave the theatre with a smile, there's a big montage of the actors dancing as the credits roll. As a comedy it isn't clever at all and even if you do laugh a couple of times, you'll feel guilty and resent the movie for catching you off-guard in a sea of obvious gags. As a romantic movie, it doesn't work either. There's so little that works here that to spend another instant writing about it would be a waste of my time and if you see "When in Rome", you're wasting yours. (Theatrical version on Dvd, September 30, 2013).