Walking out of the theater we overheard someone say “When In Rome” is “a love story ruined by total idiots” and that’s actually pretty accurate. This rare PG-13 comedy from Walt Disney is, not surprisingly, a relentlessly stupid film that barely has enough juice to get the thinly scripted story to the ninety minute mark.
The plot, such as it is, follows Beth (Kristen Bell), a woman with a great job as a curator for the Guggenheim, but who doesn’t believe in true love after a series of bad relationships. She goes to Italy for her sister’s wedding and while there meets Nick (Josh Duhamel), a fellow New Yorker whose charm and cynicism matches her own and once again her heart flutters with possibilities as they flirt non-stop throughout the reception. But when she sees him kissing a seemingly random girl he meets late in the evening, a devastated Beth gets hammered, splashes around the famous Fountain Of Love, and fishes out a handful of coins thrown in by people looking for love hoping to save them from wasting their time trying to find The One. Unbeknownst to Beth, she unleashes a curse where the owners of the coins will now be infatuated with her. UH OH!
Beth returns to New York, once again heartbroken, and finds herself suddenly intently pursued by four would-be lovers. Lance (Jon Heder), a Criss Angel-esque magician; Gale (Dax Shepard), a self-absorbed male model; Antonio (Will Arnett), an artist, and sausage magnate Danny DeVito (and yes, there is an extended dialogue sequence which uses sausage as a double entendre ha ha ha). All four of them send endless gifts and flowers to her job, follow her around New York and generally act in a way that would have any normal woman taking out restraining orders against each of them. Among the fray is Nick, who also wants to see Beth, but through an irritating plot contrivance/misunderstanding is constantly rebuffed.
While the concept has the potential to at least be cutesy, the execution is absolutely lousy. Shot with all the subtlety of a TV sitcom, the film goes for big, broad comedy (a running gag involves Duhamel falling/running into inanimate objects) that, while not entirely shocking, is dismaying be wasting the talents of everyone involved. Heder essentially plays “Napolean Dynamite” with dyed black hair, Arnett is once again wasting away with a bit part in a fourth rate comedy, while Kristen Bell, who showed some definite comedy chops in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and the excellent TV series “Party Down,” is reduced to a stock character here. We’re as astounded as anyone else by saying Shephard is the only one here who delivers some genuine laughs. He has one great scene when his character is first introduced to Beth that finds the rare balance between stupid and funny, and in the rest of his appearances, he’s the only one who seems to bring some freshness to the proceedings. Dax Shepard…..who would’ve thought? Oh, and we should note that it absolutely pains us to find Angelica Huston slumming it in a film like this.
Being the agent for director Mark Steven Johnson must be the hardest job in Hollywood, because every time this guy steps behind the camera he delivers a bomb. “Simon Birch,” “Daredevil” and “Ghost Rider” are his previous three films, and he even wrote “Elektra.” How on Earth is this guy still getting his name on the back of a director’s chair!? Watching this, we’re not even sure this guy knows how to compose a shot. The location filming in Italy is so rote, we honestly thought it was a sound stage . We’re also not sure how the iconic Guggenheim, where large portions of the movie are set, looks so ordinary in this film, but we have a feeling Johnson probably isn’t an art lover to begin with. We’re sure Johnson will disappear again for a few years and re-emerge to helm another piece of crap. At the very least, we can be relieved he’s not getting regular work.
Anyway, we’re not going to bother detailing the second-half machinations that further push apart, and then bring together Beth and Nick, nor bore you with how the curse is lifted. Needless to say, it’s predictable, unfunny and tedious to the point where we were getting more laughs out of the person sucking their teeth behind us at every plot development than anything happening in the film.
We’re not exactly sure who this film was made for. Being a Disney movie, the comedy nowhere near approaches even a moderate level of raunch or innuendo audiences might expect from a film like this. We don’t even recall hearing any cursing so the PG-13 rating is greatly misleading; this is basically a PG film with one or two slightly bawdy gags. The film is too insipid and grossly juvenile, even for the most casual of adult viewers, so we don’t think it was made for them. Our only guess is that this is aimed at tween girls, and if so, it delivers an absolutely awful message. Beth, who is passionate about her job, states that the only way she will ever get married if she finds a man that she loves more than her job. Hear that girls? You can’t have it all! It’s either your career or a man — there’s no such thing as having a successful career and relationship — but if you don’t want to end up lonely and pitied, you know what the right choice is.
If there is any silver lining to all of this, we’re sort of glad that this is opening in the dregs of January, where it will probably be steamrolled by “Avatar” and then eventually die a slow death on DVD. It will at least guarantee that we won’t hear from Johnson or the writers behind this (and “Old Dogs”) for a little while. [D]