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Movie Review: Dedra gives 'When in Rome’ a C
(by Dedra Cordle, staff writer - February 03, 2010)
Valentine’s Day shall soon be upon us, which means your local theater is, or soon will be, inundated with romantic comedies to waste your money on. One such movie is the celebrity vehicle “Valentine’s Day.” I’d rather face a swarm of flesh-eating locusts than see this movie.
So, I decided to get my romantic comedy fill beforehand with “When In Rome.”
The very cute Kristen Bell plays Beth, a successful curator for the Guggenheim Museum who is dealing with the aftermath of a sudden dumping by a long-time beau. She tells her concerned co-workers she doesn’t mind being single again because she is too involved with her career. But when she learns her ex is engaged and her younger sister Joan (Alexis Dziena) is marrying an Italian stud she just met, Beth looks like she would like to be impaled by a sculpture.
In the midst of planning a mega-important event—and under the watchful eye of her boss Celeste (Anjelica Huston) who is just waiting for her to mess up—Beth boards a plane to Rome to attend her sister’s wedding. She doesn’t expect to find a love interest on the journey since she will only be there for 48 hours.
Enter Nick (Josh Duhamel), a New York sportswriter and groomsman for her new brother-in-law. He’s good-looking, laid-back, charming, a bit of a bumbling doofus, and has Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” as his ringtone. What’s not to love?
During the reception, they share quips, drinks and a dance, and genuinely seem to like each other. Just as Beth decides to take a chance on him, she spots Nick sharing a seemingly consensual smooch with another woman.
Fed up with love, a drunken Beth berates the stone goddess who overlooks the (fictional) Fontana D’Amore and steals a few coins from the fountain’s shallow depths. This act of defiance invokes the original owner of the tossed-in coin to fall in love her with.
Now, instead of too little love, Beth has all kinds of men (in various levels of stability) vying for her attention. They include an image-obsessed model (Dax Shepard), a lousy street magician (Jon Heder), a struggling artist (Will Arnett), and a lonely widow (Danny DeVito). Put Nick in the mix, and it’s quite a romantic mess.
Like most romantic comedies, “When In Rome” follows the all too familiar formula: Girl is unlucky in love, girl meets boy, girl and boy like each other, things separate boy and girl, hijinks ensue. Then the audience sits and wonders how long it will be until boy and girl are together again so they can go home. Or is that just me?
But unlike other movies in this genre, “When In Rome” doesn’t stoop to humiliate the heroine for laughs, and she doesn’t obsess about the pretty white gown and the fairy tale wedding. Both were appreciated, so in turn I couldn’t dislike this movie all that much. For an oftentimes hater of the rom-coms, that’s saying something.
I give this movie a C+.
Dedra Cordle is a staff writer and movie reviewer for the Columbus Messenger Co.
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