Just a series of scenes set in lovely Rome

Rating: Null/10 (13 March 2014)

I saw a two-part documentary on Woody Allen a few months ago. At one point during the documentary, he pulls out a box filled with bits of paper and he says something to the effect that he is constantly writing ideas down on pieces of paper. From those pieces of paper he creates his scripts. I thought he meant that an idea then comes to fruition from the musings he has gathered. In To Rome with Love, it appears that he just reached his boney hand int0 the box, pulled out six or seven pieces of paper, and wrote six or seven separate little silly stories with the ideas from each.
There is no plot, just a series of conversations that speak to some neurosis of Woody's that must have been bothering him when he was working on the script.
There is no editing. There are no segues between scenes. Just a choppy sea that bounces us around on top of waves that randomly hit the bow.
There are just a series of scenes set in lovely Rome (which made me want to visit again; I haven't been there in ten years) that have no relationship to each other, and frankly, it is Woody Allen at his laziest. I have already determined that Woody Allen is a lazy writer and director. He mentioned in an interview that he's fast and on budget because he has other things he likes to do, other interests in his life, and thus has no desire to spend more time than he has to on the set. He is notorious for giving little direction, for not providing much input to enable actors to see his vision. Actors speak of this tendency with reverence as if no direction makes him a great director. Huh? I believe his technique of inserting actors into scenes as teachers of the scene's point is lazy too. He doesn't have to show us the way to anything, he just sticks someone into the scene who has no business being there to tell us what we are supposed to surmise from the action around it. That's Alec Baldwin's job in To Rome with Love, and he does it well. And the message he's giving us is so "Baldwin" that you are willing to sit and nod in agreement. Juliet Taylor is also well cast. But as a woman, the entire vignette about Monica, the manipulative, deceitful, seductress of the innocent, and Jack, who never had a prayer of escaping her black widow's web, makes me furious. And I think Woody thinks that way. He's just an innocent guy who has been made out to be the bad guy by women who always planned to destroy him Enough about Woody's personal life. Back to his lazy professional life. Looking back, I've decided he was lazy in Midnight in Paris too. He brought in all kinds of literary giants from another era, but he presented them in shallow characterizations, rather than doing some homework and really having them respond as they might have to some of the questions Gil could have asked them. Instead, they just showed up and bantered in a shallow, one-liner sort of way. It could have been truly thought provoking and unique if they had responded to questions about present-day intellectual challenges.
The last scene is worth the trip. "Volare" played by a brass and string band on the Spanish Steps is marvelous. I hummed it all the way home, much to the chagrin of my aunt and cousin, who attended the movie with me. But why not? I would have loved to have been there in the dark when they were filming it. No one around. The middle of the night. "Volare" wafting into the night. A little whimsy is a good thing.
I may be done with Woody Allen. I have said it before, but maybe this time I mean it. Work a little harder Woody, and quit resting on your laurels. Your sharp wit and pathetic neurosis are getting as old as you apparently feel.