To Rome With Love MPAA Rating: R Entertainment: +2 Content: -3

Woody Allen, Alec Baldwin, Penelope Cruz, Roberto Benigni, Judy Davis, Jesse Eisenberg. Romantic Comedy. Written & directed by Woody Allen.

FILM SYNOPSIS: Further investigating the comical prospects of Europe, here Woody Allen sets his multiple-story concept in the Eternal City. An American girl falls in love with an Italian, so her mom (Judy Davis) and dad (Woody Allen) fly over to meet her fiancée and his folks. Woody is a retired record producer, so when he overhears the father-in-law-to-be singing like Caruso in the shower, he immediately wants to promote this great talent. Turns out the guy can only sing in the shower. Then there are the newlyweds who get separated, with him getting entangled with a prostitute and she with an opportunistic movie star. Then there’s Alec Baldwin as a visiting architect who mystically meets himself as a young man, and tries to warn the younger version not to get involved with a destructive free spirit.

PREVIEW REVIEW: I haven’t seen this much absurdity since Waiting For Godot. Like today’s filmmakers use crudity to stimulate the funnybones of their audiences, Woody Allen has always used zany, nonsensical premises to tickle our sides. But a writer/director takes a chance with such an abundance of absurdity. Sometimes the concept initially looks better in the script than it ultimately does on the screen. (You’d think seeing a guy wheeled around a stage in a shower as he performs Rigoletto would be hysterical. Sadly, not so much.)

Where Midnight in Paris was a hit, To Rome With Love is more of a hit-and-miss. One thing you want to hear in a Woody Allen comedy is laughter from the audience. It only came sporadically at the press screening. But there are still laughs and when you go to see a Woody Allen comedy, you are seeing a dying breed. He still incorporates observational humor amid his cartoonish antics. And while his humor can often be irreverent and raucous, it’s seldom raunchy.

While it’s difficult for me to recommend Woody’s film collection due to that irreverence and bawdiness, still I think of him as a true genius as a comic filmmaker. Sleeper, Manhattan, Hanna and Her Sisters, What’s Up Tiger Lily?, Annie Hall, Zelig, The Purple Rose of Cairo, and Bullets Over Broadway are inventive and hysterical. Some of his deeper films such as Crimes and Misdemeanors are also revealing, downright insightful. And even when a film doesn’t quite work, such as Small Time Crooks, still there’s no denying that the bespectacled auteur gave us his all.

Keep in mind, while I respect Mr. Allen as a clever, inventive filmmaker, he is also a man who misuses Jesus’ name in nearly every one of his films. I just can’t defend that.

Preview Reviewer: Phil Boatwright
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics