To Rome With Love: Review

By Spence Blazak

I had no plans to write a review of Woody Allen’s latest because I didn’t feel like many people these days still followed the Wood-meister as religiously as I do (I don’t get out much). Then I watched a Family Guy last night that featured an obscure reference to Crimes and Misdemeanors and felt inspired.

Also, I’m going to see The Dark Knight Rises tonight, and all signs are pointing to it getting a positive review. With several of my last few reviews being favorable, I wanted to write this one to prove that I’m not going soft on you, my fair reader. I can write a mediocre review! Even for a Woody Allen movie! See?!

I digress.

Woody Allen’s most recent film escapade finds him in Roma. The story is a series of intercut vignettes all dealing with infatuation, love, and the enigmatic motivations of the opposite sex. One tale features Alec Baldwin revisiting the street he lived on as a young man where he takes Jesse Eisenberg, a lad who is making mistakes in love eerily similar to his own, under his wing

Another features newlyweds who are as prude as the average attendee of a St. Peter’s Middle School Eight Grade dance. They are meeting up with the husband’s extended family JUST WHEN ROMANTIC COMEDY HIJINX STRIKES! The weakest spun yarn features Roberto Benigni as an average Joe who suddenly becomes famous, in a story that attempts to lampoon reality television culture, but doesn’t add anything new to the now drawn out idea. The strongest features Allen, back on the screen after a six year hiatus, as a retired opera producer who may have found his next star in the form of an Italian mortician.

To Rome with Love should be taken at face value. It is standard Allen fare, but the problem is that after a movie as great as last year’s Midnight in Paris, more than usual is expected from him. This being said, the film still has all of the beloved themes and character types from other Allen films: the morally ambiguous nature of breaking a monogamous relationship, all people have an expert lover somewhere inside of them, the character (played here by Jesse Eisenberg) who is basically just Woody, the woman who would have been played Mia Farrow if she was still married to Woody, the pedantic conservative, the judgmental therapist, and the woman who at first seems frumpy but is actually a femme fatale.

Is it a classic Woody movie? By no means. Is it classic Woody? In many ways, yes. As dopey as some of it is, it is still quite often hilarious and entertaining. Definitely worth a look on DVD for a Woody fan, as long as you know what you’re getting yourself into.

If Annie Hall is a four star-er, and The Curse of the Jade Scorpion is a one star-er, then To Rome With Love gets a formidable 2-and-a-half out of 4 stars.