Butler's Cinema Scene

Woody Allen, Judy Davis

“TO ROME WITH LOVE” My rating: C (Now showing)

102 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“To Rome With Love” is Woody Allen’s Michael Bay movie. Which is to say that it’s very busy and discouragingly empty.

Perhaps I’m too harsh. It’s a Woody movie, after all, which means that it has a fair share of solid laughs. It’s just that the laughs don’t seem to be in the service of anything. There’s not even any of the magical sleight of hand of his last film, the sleeper hit “Midnight in Paris.”

As the title suggests, this one is set in Rome. There’s not story, just lots of little stories as the film flits among a big cast of characters, both American and Italian.

An American student (Alison Pill) falls for an Italian boy (Flavio Parenti), necessitating a meeting between her parents (Judy Davis and Allen, the latter in high hypochondriacal form) and his. Allen’s character is a retired opera director, and he is thrilled to discover that his Italian counterpart (acclaimed tenor Fabio Armiliato), a mortician by trade, possesses a fantastic singing voice.  But he can only hit those high notes when in the shower. Let your imagination do the rest.

Penelope Cruz

Two naive honeymooners from the provinces (Alessandro Tiberi, Alessandra Mastronardi) are separated. He is mistaken by a high-priced called girl (Penelope Cruz) as the recipient of a very special gift; she gets lost in the big city, stumbles across a film set and is seduced by a movie star (Antonio Albanese).

An architecture student (Jesse Eisenberg) meets his middle-aged self (Alec Baldwin), who cannot prevent him from betraying his girl (Greta Gerwig) for her flighty friend (Ellen Page).

Finally, a happily anonymous office clerk (Roberto Benigni) becomes famous overnight and is besieged by reporters and paparazzi who want to know every mundane detail about his life. (What does he eat for breakfast? Briefs or boxers?)

All of these stories unfold simultaneously, and Allen shows considerable skill and creativity in jumping between the various narrative lines.

Now if only those narrative lines had something to say other than a few worn-out observations about fame, infidelity and the leavening effects of aging.

Not one of the characters is allowed to develop beyond the parameters of a caricature.

And in a couple of instances Allen seems to be playing a perverse game, the objects of which are way beyond my simple grasp.

Alec Baldwin, Jesse Eisenberg

For example, the characters played by Page and Albanese both are touted as eroticism on wheels, as individuals whose attentions invariably prove fatal to the opposite sex. Thing is,  Albanese is a pudgy, bald fellow who looks like a slightly younger James Gandolfini, while Page is girl-next-door cute but just the opposite of a femme fatale.

Unless these two represent a monumentally bad case of miscasting (which I doubt), Allen is playing some sort of trick on us. Perhaps some day he’ll let us know what he had in mind.

The physical production is sumptuous (Darius Khondji is the cinematographer) and the Rome locations beautiful.

But I found myself losing interest long before “To Rome With Love” was ready to pack it in.

| Robert W. Butler