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Short of the second coming of “Annie Hall,” no Woody Allen film was going to get a fair shake following “Midnight in Paris,” an ultra-lovable dream of a comedy and the prolific director’s most financially fruitful effort.
So it’s no surprise that “To Rome With Love,” yet another Allen Euro-trip, feels a tad minor for its maker, as early reviews have reported. Its jokes don’t always land, its characters don’t always pop and its stance as a love letter to a city feels redundant, as if Allen is throwing darts at a map before rinsing and repeating. But in looking at the broader movie landscape, which, this year, has been less than awe-inspiring, it’s hard to not be impressed and tickled by Allen’s latest, a reassurance that even when he’s not on his A-game, he outplays most other storytellers in the biz.
“Rome” consists of four plotlines, which thankfully don’t connect in any manipulative manner. On screen for the first time in six years, Allen plays a retired opera director whose visit to the title locale prompts him to ignite the career of an unlikely tenor (Fabio Armiliato). Elsewhere in the film, a budding architect (Jesse Eisenberg) woos an actress (Ellen Page) under the watchful eye of a sentimental mentor (Alec Bladwin); an awkward everyman (Roberto Benigni) acquires inexplicable overnight fame; and a young, out-of-town couple (Alessandra Mastronardi and Alessandro Tiberi) sees their relationship tested, thanks to her movie-star adoration and his run-in with a saucy prostitute (Penélope Cruz).
Peppered with Allen’s usual cultural witticisms and neurotic self-deprecation, this alternately dexterous and lazy tour-bus ride offers big laughs and little disappointments, like lowbrow hooker gags well beneath the auteur’s capabilities. And while it purports to be a film about love, sex and Rome (the dizzying navigation of which is deftly skewered), it’s really Allen’s blithe commentary on celebrity, inspired, in no small part, by the city’s birth of the paparazzi. Without preaching or grasping for faux profundity, Allen uses the fluctuation of notoriety as his film’s connective tissue, weaving together the yarns he continues to spin so well.
To Rome With Love
R
Three reels out of four
Opens Friday at the Ritz Five
Recommended Rental
Margaret
R
Available Tuesday
One of the best films of 2011, and one whose under-the-radar studio snubbing led to a wave of critical support, Kenneth Lonergan’s “Margaret,” a New York saga years in the making, is an uncannily well-written and gorgeously acted drama, unfolding in a wild way that’s brilliant even in its faults. Anna Paquin is fantastic as a spoiled high-schooler whose world comes undone when she witnesses manslaughter firsthand, sparking a stunning ripple effect. Consider this essential viewing.
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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