To Rome with Love *** (2012, Woody Allen, Penélope Cruz, Jesse Eisenberg, Ellen Page, Roberto Benigni, Alec Baldwin, Greta Gerwig, Judy Davis) – Classic Movie Review 5791

Writer-director Woody Allen’s trip to Rome produces a very odd and very silly, though weirdly likeable and sometimes very amusing, multi-stranded romantic comedy. It gives the impression of being dashed off in a hurry to meet a deadline and, no being quite ready when they filmed it, didn’t work out quite as planned, and had to be rescued at the editing stage.

If you compare it with Manhattan (1979), a similar love affair to a city, it falls very far short. But if you want a series of daft characters in crazy situations, and a few easy-going, good-natured laughs out of them, To Rome with Love is okay. There are some good ideas, some good gags, and some good performances among the drossy ones. Allen is making fun of the Italians, rather shamelessly, though he would probably say he is also making fun of the visiting Americans – but only just.

Pointing his cameras at Manhattan looked like an act of worship, an insider’s labour of love. But pointing his cameras at Rome makes Allen just look like one of the visiting tourists he wants to poke fun at gently. To be fair, he casts a lot of Italian actors, and actually lets them speak Italian with lots of sub-titles.

The movie is also a comment on fame and infidelity. Such strained and shallow comments as we find from Allen here are commonplace and recycle ideas he has used far better before in much better movies. Some of the ideas just don’t work, and are actually bewildering.

Roberto Benigni’s storyline about an everyday working man called Leopoldo, who suddenly finds himself a victim of celebrity, the media and the paparazzi for no particular reason is baffling, its mysteries never uncovered, its entertainment value zero. Alec Baldwin’s all-knowing deus ex machina character John, incessantly appearing to advise young Jack (Jesse Eisenberg) on his love life is equally baffling and pointless. No offence to Benigni and Baldwin, but the movie would be so much better without these two characters and their storylines.

Eisenberg does his usual charming dithering act as expatriate Jack, who lives in Rome with his sweet ideal partner Sally (Greta Gerwig), but gets tempted, against Baldwin’s strong warning, by the quirky charms of in-house visiting actress Monica (Ellen Page) when they are foisted together by Sally. This story, though a shade irritating, goes pretty well, perhaps mainly because of the expert actors.

However, it is Allen and Judy Davis who are seen to best advantage as retired music producer Jerry and psychiatrist Phyllis, who travel to Rome to meet their daughter Hayley (Alison Pill), who has met and fallen for lawyer Michelangelo (Flavio Parenti) on the street of Rome. When they go to the family’s mortuary home to meet his parents, Jerry is amusingly boorish, and Davis hilariously sarcastic.

But then Jerry listens to Michelangelo’s father Giancarlo (Fabio Armiliato) singing in the shower, and he is convinced he could help him to become a naturally talented opera singer but soon finds out he can only sing in the shower, so he then… This one-joke gag is then milked mercilessly by Allen, though, even so, yes it can be funny.

The other best strand of the movie comes when Antonio (Alessandro Tiberi) and Milly (Alessandra Mastronardi) leave small-town Italy for Rome to meet Antonio’s high society relatives. But Milly thinks her hair makes her look like a provincial teacher, so she nips out for the hairdresser but gets lost in Rome and meets her favourite actor Luca Salta (Antonio Albanese), while high-class prostitute Anna (Penélope Cruz) mistakenly enters Antonio’s room. All this goes really rather well, and is pretty darned amusing sometimes actually very funny.

Spanish enchantress Cruz may not be remotely Italian, or probably anything like any hooker you’d find in Rome, but she is classy, enchanting and funny.

And there it is, what we call a curate’s egg. Now I have to digress. A curate’s egg describes something that is mostly or partly bad, but nonetheless partly good with undue redeeming power, with an indeterminate mix of good and bad qualities.

The term derives from a cartoon published in the humorous British magazine Punch on 9 November 1895 drawn by George du Maurier and titled True Humility. It shows a curate eating breakfast in his bishop’s house.

Bishop: ‘I’m afraid you’ve got a bad egg, Mr Jones.

Curate (anxious not to offend his eminent host): ‘Oh no, my Lord, I assure you that parts of it are excellent!’

So now it is up to you to decide just what percentage of the mix of good and bad qualities To Rome with Love has. Fifty-fifty, 40/60, or what?

I forgot to mention the Monsieur Hulot-style traffic cop (Pierluigi Marchionne) at the start. He’s funny, could have done with a lot more of him. I forgot to mention the music too. It’s most amusing in the vintage Woody way, Italian style.

With sexual references and situations, it is quite saucy, and there is one use of the F word.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5791

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