Beautiful and Awful

Rating: 3/10 (13 July 2012)

Four interweaving and completely independent story lines: 2 of them all in Italian, 1 all in English, 1 mixed language, all featuring gorgeous scenery, but dreadfully written. Two of them were, as others have said here, one joke premises with zero payoff (the one with Roberto Benigni and the one with Woody Allen). The only time I even chuckled in the whole movie was when the lost Italian women was trying to get directions from strangers on the street ("go the next road over, take it down to where it ends at the fish restaurant, you can't miss it, turn right there over the bridge, go past the stairs then take the next two lefts and it's on your right", etc.). Alec Baldwin's character had some witty lines, but his capricious presence/absence in that story line was so confusing it was hard to appreciate anything he said.
I guess it doesn't bother me when the dialogue is funny, but when it's not I find it very annoying how many of the characters in Woody Allen's movies seem to be doing an impression of him constantly (in addition to Woody being himself on screen in this one).
So many of Allen's movies portray (often multiple) characters committing (and usually getting away with) adultery and/or murder that I don't think you could call it a spoiler to reveal that this movie is no exception. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but it's getting tiresome.
This is no "Midnight in Paris."