Enjoyable, but lacking

Rating: 7/10 (4 July 2012)

Quite liked it, obviously not one of his better movies but even on a bad day I still think Allen does a better job with rom-coms than most other directors.
It was nice to see Allen return to the screen, still his neurotic old self and keeping the best jokes for himself too. Also, Alec Baldwin's pop-ups made me laugh often. The rest of the cast was fine: not irritating but not particularly memorable either.
The main problem I had was keeping up with the plots. The Italian and English mix was confusing at times, and certain plot elements were vague or undisclosed (like the ending of the storyline with Penelope Cruz, that ended quite abruptly) and left me wanting something more.
Also, the multiple plot lines resulted in quite a bit of rehashing. With this I mean the fact that there are basically 4 Woody Allen-ish characters (Allen himself, Eisenberg, Benigni and the Antonio character) which after a while started to annoy me, because it started feeling like I was watching 4 different episodes of a series at the same time, and not a particularly coherent series at that.
What possibly annoyed me even more though were the two ladies sitting next to me in the theater, who had probably never heard of Woody Allen before but felt inclined to both hum along to every song on the soundtrack that they knew, and to, whenever a famous Roman site was in a shot, meticulously recall what they did at that site during that one time they went to Rome. I actually think that sums up my idea of the film nicely: if you're a Woody Allen fan, you'll probably enjoy the film, but if you're not that fond of him, it's probably better to just buy a picture book about Rome and look at that.