I do not love "To Rome with Love", even though its not a "To Rome with Hate" for me

Rating: 7/10 (9 July 2012)

I loved Woody Allen's Paris, but was definitely disappointed with Woody Allen's Rome. For the most part, "To Rome with Love" lacked creativity, inventiveness, and appeal. Unlike Woody's wondrous "Midnight in Paris" which was both a love letter to a divine city and also a captivating narrative, "To Rome With Love" was just simply the former and lacking the latter. Now, I did enjoy some facets of "To Rome with Love" but like my personal European trips, they were far and few in between. Woody seemed rushed in constructing the movie, it was like he was trying to build Rome in one day. The film features several story lines set in the titular city, some with natives and some with tourists. We start the Rome adventure with a trip to Haley's Comet, which would be the young American Haley who travels to Rome in an excursion. Haley falls in love with the Italian Michelangelo (no, not that Michelangelo, this is not "Midnight in Rome") and therefore since it is a romance in the most romantic city in the world, they get engaged. Haley's American parents Jerry and Phyllis visit Rome to meet Michelangelo and his parents. Jerry is played by none other than Woody himself, and Phyllis is portrayed by Judy Davis. Jerry, who is a retired Opera Director, notices that Michelangelo's dad has a brilliant opera singing voice when he hears him singing in the shower; so therefore Jerry decides to try to ride that ticket to a return to Opera glory even though Michelangelo and his mother are totally against it. Let's just say this storyline was not showered with magnetism. It was great to see Davis in an Allen film again, being a veteran of so many Woodyflicks. And Woody was just being Woody with another neurosis-filled performance. Allison Pill turned out a solid performance as Haley. I want to say so much on the promise of Allison's acting career, but I decided to take a chill pill and move on to our next stop in our Rome film review excursion. That would include the beautiful return of Roberto Benigni (remember him?) as the Italian family man Leopoldo who obtains instant stardom when he inadvertently becomes a Reality Star phenomenon, and gets plummeted with press observing every move he makes during the day. Allen is obviously depicting the unauthentic aspects of Reality Show fame, but the joke starts wearing thin at times even though Benigni portrays it with precision. Moving right along to our next Rome storyline, there is a story that was prostituted for cheesy laughs. And that would be of a young Italian married couple Antonio and Milly who visit Rome to meet Antonio's uncles but a series of events lead Antonio and Milly to separate Romeatic adventures including Antonio having a bombshell Italian prostitute named Anna pretend that she is his wife for reasons that would take too much time and energy to explain. Besides that, the story was not funny; but Penelope Cruz did look ravishing even though her performance was overacted and not even in the same ball park as her Oscar-winning performance in Allen's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona". And our last stop in "To Rome with Love" was the most entertaining narrative of the movie. It includes Jesse Eisenberg, Ellen Page, Greta Gerwig, and Alec Baldwin. Eisenberg plays Jack, an architect student living abroad in Rome with his American girlfriend Sally, that girl is portrayed by Gerwig. Jack meets the effervescent middle-aged John (Alec Baldwin), who when he was Jack's age also studied architecture in Rome. John becomes like a guiding force and voice of reason or unreason to Jack by giving him advice on a dilemma that occurs when Sally's best friend Monica (Ellen Page) visits Jack and Sally. Monica is cerebral, analytical, and chatty which are all attributes that attract Jack to her. So where they be a ménage a trios as the Romans do?, o wait that is the French. Baldwin nailed the John performance, and is worthy enough of a Best Supporting Actor nomination. Ellen Page has just turned another page in her impressive young acting career with another fine-tuned performance. I do have to credit Allen for scribing a very witty screenplay within this storyline, but this is the only one that did it for me. Allen does show breathtaking scenes of Rome that brilliantly captures the beauty and romance of the beloved city, but that was not even enough for me to unanimously recommend this movie. "To Rome with Love" is not a total disaster, and it does have numerous good things in it, but if I were you I would not spend too many Romeing charges on it. *** Average