To Rome with Love (2012)

Genre

Comedy | Romance

Director

Woody Allen

Country

USA | Italy

Cast

Alison Pill, Flavio Parenti, Woody Allen, Judy David, Fabio Armiliato, Roberto Benigni, Monica Nappo, Cecilia Capriotti, Marta Zoffoli, Alessandro Tiberi, Alessandra Mastronardi, Penelope Cruz, Simona Caparrini, Ornella Muti, Antonio Albanese, Riccardo Scamarcio, Alec Baldwin, Jesse Eisenberg, Greta Gerwig, Ellen Page, Lino Guanciale

Storyline

The intertwining stories of a worker (Roberto Benigni) who wakes up to find himself a celebrity, an architect (Alec Baldwin) who takes a trip back to the street he lived on as a student, a young couple (Alessandro Tiberi and Alessandra Mastronardi) on their honeymoon, and a frustrated opera director (Woody Allen) who has a talent for discovering talented singers.

Opinion

After the brilliant "Midnight in Paris", one would have never expected Allen's following film to be bad. I mean, only an year earlier the man proved everybody he still has it. But life is often unpredictable, and Allen's Roman holidays have left me a bitter taste.

The thing is that "To Rome with Love" isn't charming and doesn't have a lot of humour, rather it is a little bit tedious and unoriginal. Quite a disappointment in other words.

Once again Allen himself wrote the screenplay, but he was probably out of ideas because, like mentioned before, the film lacks originality. It feels like he took random elements from his old movies and made a new one. And those elements are so random they don't even make a lot of sense.

The storyline, for example, is a series of four vignettes that have nothing to do with one another. It's just like four pieces from four different puzzles. It would have been okay with me if they were four good stories, but unfortunately while three are quite good and have quite interesting characters, the fourth is simply annoying and distracting and killed all the potential the film had.

Also to be said is that despite the film's runs a little longer than most of Allen's other films, not a single character has the time to develop, thus the story, even the good ones, ends up being boring.

And then there's Rome. I've been in Rome so many times I've lost count, and I can assure you this is not the real Rome. Maybe it could fool a tourist, but it won't work with someone that knows the city.

However, there's the all-star cast that does a good job - Roberto Benigni being an exception as he overacts more than ever in the worst vignette of the film. But not even a cast of great actors could save this film.