Sugary sweet film won't quite rot your teeth
Posted Feb 11, 2010 By Mark Haskins
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Tweet ThisMOVIE: When in Rome
STARRING: Kristen Bell, Josh Duhamel, Angelica Huston, Danny DeVito, Dax Shepard, Will Arnett and Jon Heder
DIRECTOR: Mark Steven Johnson
RATING: PG-13
EMC Lifestyle - There was something Shakespearean about When in Rome. It was as if a high school student took the Coles Notes for A Mid Summer's Night Dream and tried to turn it into a movie.
Beth (Kristen Bell) loves her job as a curator for the Guggenheim so much she doesn't need a relationship. She's a workaholic who believes she'll know Mr. Right when she meets him because she'll love him more than her job. You can tell Beth is a well-balanced individual.
It's at her sister's wedding in Rome that Beth meets Nick (Josh Duhamel). The two are inextricably drawn to each other, and for a moment Beth believes in love at first sight. That is until she sees Nick with another woman.
Dejected, spurned, and once again back to believing love is a waste of time, Beth turns to a legendary fountain of love. In an act of defiance Beth takes five coins from the fountain. What she doesn't realize is that when you take coins from the fountain you steal that person's love.
Back in America Beth is back to throwing herself into her work. It's not as easy as it used to be because she's being bombarded with distractions. Those distractions are Antonio (Will Arnett) the struggling artist, Gale (Dax Shepard) the cover model, Lance (Job Heder) the street magician, and Al (Danny DeVito) the businessman. All four threw coins into the fountain and all four are now madly in love with Beth.
The fifth coin belongs to Nick, and like the others he's pursuing Beth. The trouble is Beth really likes Nick, but she can't be sure if what Nick is feeling is real, or if it's just the magic of the fountain.
When in Rome is your typical sugary sweat romantic comedy. It won't quite rot your teeth but it might come close. The story jumps around quickly from scene to scene never worrying about developing a real story or a real connection between the characters. It's really just a bunch of clichés strung together into a film. There are moments here and there, but the film lacks the cleverness to be really funny.
I didn't mind Kristen Bell and Josh Duhamel as the leading couple. They traded banter well enough, and they certainly had the charm and the looks for the roles. In the end they were okay, but like the rest of the film they weren't anything special.
Dax Shepard, Jon Heder, Will Arnett and Danny DeVito do what they do best which is clown around. The four are first-rate clowns, and they give the film some of its few funny moments.
While it lacks any true sense of poetry, When in Rome is mindlessly amusing. It's the kind of film you might have on in the background while you do something else.
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