Saturday, January 30, 2010
Following in the tradition of terrible movies coming out this time of year, "When in Rome" sets the bar. This vile depiction of a chick flick is the most unrealistic movie to come out in a long time, and this is after viewing "Transformers 2" and every other ludicrous action movie of '09.
This not-so-feel-good story involves an over-achieving girl who falls for hunky boy and vice versa, but a twist of fate causes a bunch of other boys to fall for the girl. Kristen Bell (from the equally awful “Couples Retreat”) fails in this pile of cinematic garbage as Beth, the uber-busy art curator, who has no time for love and strikes out with men.
If it sounds like you may have heard this tale before, of course you have, but here comes the cheery little twist. During a fantastical trip to Rome for her sister's wedding, played by the annoying and seemingly anorexic Alexis Dziena "(Broken Flowers," HBO’s "Entourage"), Beth ends up meeting the possible guy of her dreams. He's played by Josh Duhamel (“Win a Date with Tad Hamilton,” and more impressively is married to Black Eyed Peas’ singer Fergie).
In a drunken whimsical moment, she takes five coins out of the majestic fountain of love. In return for this cute thievery, the five guys who tossed them fall in love with her, following Beth back to New York City in desperate attempts to win her affection.
Danny DeVito, Will Arnett, Dax Shepard, and Jon Heder play the embarrassing hopeless saps. DeVito plays a painful sausage kingpin and should have stayed far away from this project, since he has been gaining hip notoriety with the hilarious FX television show “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”
Will Arnett (“Blades of Glory,” TV’s short-lived "Arrested Development”) should have also listened to his senses when agreeing to play a lame Italian painter, who doesn’t come close to saying anything funny.
It’s not a big surprise that untalented mid- 2000s Flavors of the Month Dax Shepard (MTV’s "Punk’d") and Jon Heder ("Napoleon Dynamite") don’t do anything with their screen time. But Heder did make me cringe with his inability to make people laugh as a cornball street magician.
And if anyone cares about B-list celebrity hook-ups, Shepard and Bell are going out in real life, which makes perfect sense because both of them lack personalities.
This romantic comedy has every cliché and predictable moment you could possibly fathom. Without even thinking of the absurd premise, the sheer audacity of the screenwriters believing people actually act this way in real life is appalling.
Or the fact that their take on women is something a junior high student would write.
The first red flag goes up when you see that the main character's three confidantes ironically include a nerdy weird-looking girl, a chubby companion, and a gay dude, of course.
I am pretty sure the geniuses who wrote this movie watched a few seasons of "Sex and the City" and looked at each other and said, “That’s a Bingo.”
Watch out guys -- if you are coerced into seeing this movie, I send my condolences, but the director Mark Steven Johnson (of such screen gems as “Ghost Rider” and “Simon Birch”) was thinking about you.
He throws in cameos by Shaq and Lawrence Taylor in a brief ridiculous scene to gain some cred with the male side of the date equation. That is, if they didn’t already go into the theatre lobby and start pounding the six-dollar beers that some cinemas are starting to serve.
And to anyone who actually enjoyed this movie, I feel really sorry for you.
PG-13 - (91 min.)
½ star (out of 4)
Comments
BlakeReviewSTL (anonymous) says...
I agree with you on almost every point. With one exception. The movie didn't do her justice, but Kristen Bell was amazing in here TV Series "Veronica Mars",and it is a shame that she keeps choosing lame comedies to be in.
I will always be surprised when I go to screenings for a film like this, and I hear all the laughter. I'm not sure I laughed once, and I enjoy the occasional mind numbing comedy.
January 30, 2010 at 12:29 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )