R (sexual references); 109 min.
To Rome With Love, Woody Allen's latest stamp on his European work visa, is a film not without its charms. But they are so few and far between that the film's raison d'être stares you in the face for a solid 100 minutes.
It's location, location. location -- a lame collection of recycled bits and characters cut and pasted to fit that location.
You always feel bad for the all-star cast of an Allen picture that fails. Alec Baldwin has probably been waiting his whole life for Allen to call. It was probably the same with young players Alison Pill, Ellen Page, Jesse Eisenberg and Greta Gerwig. And yet this multicharacter farce has little that's farcical about it, little that's even funny. A comical celebration of adultery in the country where they take cheating seriously, To Rome has lovely Roman locations, a generous scattering of Italian actors and a set of noninterlocking stories so feeble you know they were ideas Allen whacked out of better films.
National treasure or not, you kind of wish the Wood-man would take two or three years between movies, find a collaborator who's a little more hip, and strive not to just make another movie, but to make every movie count.
Exclusive: The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; Tinseltown Grapevine; AMC Grapevine Mills; Rave Ridgmar, Fort Worth; Harkins Southlake; AMC The Parks at Arlington; Landmark Magnolia, Dallas
-- Roger Moore
McClatchy Tribune News Service
