Sunday, January 31, 2010
A+E, Movies, Reviews

‘When in Rome,’ skip this movie

 

Love’s a funny thing, but it’s rarely as silly as it appears in movies like “When in Rome,” which should appeal to audiences seeking that kind of diversion. If you want lovers exchanging witticisms instead of doing pratfalls, stay home and read an Oscar Wilde play.

Kristen Bell raises her big screen profile as a candidate for the next Reese Witherspoon. She plays Beth, a workaholic curator for New York’s Guggenheim Museum who’s never had any luck with relationships.

When her “baby sister” (Alexis Dziena) gets engaged to an Italian she met two weeks earlier, Beth goes to Rome to be the maid of honor and finds mutual attraction with the best man, Nick (Josh Duhamel). Thinking she’s lost him, she wades drunkenly into the Fountain of Love and scoops up five coins to spare hopeful romantics the pain of finding love. It takes more than half an hour to reach this point, which sets the plot in motion.

Retrieving those coins somehow makes the men who tossed them fall in love with Beth, and wouldn’t you know it? They all show up in New York the next day! Besides Nick, who never lost interest, she’s pursued by a quartet of cartoonish characters played by Danny DeVito, Will Arnett, Jon Heder and Dax Shepard. Beth cares too much to win Nick because he’s under a spell.

Anjelica Huston doesn’t break a sweat as Beth’s imperious boss, and Nick has slightly better luck (Bobby Moynihan) than Beth does (Kate Micucci) in the “quirky best friend” department.

“When in Rome” won’t have the shelf life of “Three Coins in the Fountain,” but it looks good and makes no sense, and that’s all modern moviegoers demand. 2.5 STARS—Steve Warren