Sometimes it just doesn’t take very long to know you’re in for a long painful slog of a movie. Most of the time when a movie doesn’t start out well, there’s still a feeling of hope that it’s just slow out of the gate, and the ship will right itself and ultimately finish in a blaze of glory.
Not this time. All it took was a minute of a bland pop song running over bad CG effects and images of Roman piazzas lit like sitcoms to know only doom lay ahead with When in Rome.
What do these other movies—Big Bully, Jack Frost, Elektra, Ghost Rider, and Daredevil—all have in common? Answer: They were all written by Mark Steven Johnson, who co-wrote and directed this lump. One can only assume that decision makers at Disney looked over his resumé and said, “Well, he obviously isn’t very good with comic book action movies and kid comedies, so his talents must lie in romantic comedy.” There’s always hope that medieval period dramas will be his thing.
While pretty much every aspect of When in Rome is inept, the basic idea doesn’t seem to be all that bad. Beth Harper (Kristen Bell) is the youngest curator on staff at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. She’s a workaholic who’s been unlucky in love and so is a bit out of sorts when her younger sister (Alexis Dziena) announces she’ll be having a Rome wedding to a guy she’s only known for two weeks.
The wedding is held in a church next to the “Fountain of Love” where people throw in coins as wishes for finding true love (apparently they couldn’t afford to film at Trevi Fountain). Beth meets and feels a spark with Nick (Josh Duhamel) but she sees him kissing another woman. That, combined with abundant champagne and jet lag, soon has her wading into the fountain to retrieve a handful of coins out of the fountain, thus saving people from the pain of being in love.
Unfortunately, it turns out that taking a coin from the fountain means that the person who threw the coin will fall madly in love with the person who stole it (and, apparently, a tracking device will be installed so they know how to find the person of their new desire). Doesn’t that sound like just the stupidest magical rule ever? First, it means by throwing the coin you’re at risk of being forced to love the kind of person who steals coins from the fountain. Second, since the locals apparently are keenly aware of the fine intricacies of this spell, wouldn’t there be a gaggle of lovelorn desperados scoping out the fountain and fighting over who gets to steal the coins of a particularly good catch?
Anyway, as a result, Beth finds herself back in New York with five very aggressive suitors getting in the way of the opening for her career-making exhibit at “the Goo.” She finds herself falling for Nick, but can his love be real?
Such is the first problem with the movie, though the set-up has some strong possibilities. Five coins simply makes for too many people. Jon Heder is a street magician out to impress her with his magic; Will Arnett is a painter out to impress her with his nude drawings of her; Dax Shepard is a model out to impress her with his abs; and Danny DeVito is out to impress her with his sausage…company that he owns. Each of these gets an initial come-on scene. Plus a second one where they’re again spurned. Plus a musical montage. Plus a group scene at the end. Then there are all the romance scenes with Nick, which may or may not be real love. It turns much of the movie in an extended gag reel and by the time it is over, Beth and Nick have spent maybe two hours in each others’ presence, which can make the possibility of deep love seem kind of unlikely.
So the script is too busy to focus, and the acting doesn’t help. Everything is so broadly performed that one day we will span rivers simply by laying this DVD on the water. When Beth is reduced to extraordinary measures trying to break a vase or Will Arnett is announcing (in a horrible fake accent) how important it is that he see her feet so that he can paint them, it is a real concern that maybe these scenes were rejected by The Suite Life of Zach and Cody as insufficiently subtle.
Things are so bad that When in Rome includes substandard special effects work—in a romantic comedy! One would think that if the budget wasn’t there to do it well, it would be relatively easy to simply work around it.
Needless to say, it would be difficult for me to recommend this movie less. At less than 90 minutes, it still manages to feel bloated with an unnecessary epilogue and then a cast dance sequence over the closing credits that manages to emphasize just how fake the stuff that came before looked. It is a guarantee that you can find something better to do with your time, like get a head start on your taxes. It’d be more fun.
When in Rome is a Touchstone Pictures release:
- Wide release on Friday, January 29, 2010.
- Directed by Mark Steven Johnson.
- Written by Mark Steven Johnson, David Diamond, and David Weissman.
- Starring Kristen Bell, Josh Duhamel, Will Arnett, Jon Heder, Dax Shepard, Danny DeVito.
- Rated PG-13 for some suggestive content.
- Running time 91 minutes.
- Alex’s rating: 2 out of 10.
