That's not amore!

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Alec Baldwin and Jesse Eisenberg.

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Pen��lope Cruz with Alessandro Tiberi.

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Roberto Benigni.

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Woddy Allen, centre, with Judy Davis, left and Alison Pill.

With more than 40 feature films under his belt, Woody Allen has built up such a massive body of work, you could put together a film course comparing and contrasting les films de Woody. Topics for discussion: Is You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger a renunciation of Woody's metaphysical farce A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy? Is Match Point a dramatic reconsideration of the comedy Crimes and Misdemeanors?

If you can't help looking for comparisons, To Rome With Love most resembles Allen's 1972 burlesque Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, which was likewise a series of vignettes structured on a common theme.

The newer film is sophisticated and elegant and witty where the older film was merely... well, funny.

In To Rome With Love, the common theme is the Eternal City. Allen struck a deal to make the film when the city essentially offered to underwrite the production, doubtless in the hope a Woody Allen film would do for Rome tourism what Vicki Cristina Barcelona did for Barcelona and Midnight in Paris did for Paris.

But instead of one story, Rome gets four disparate tales:

-- John (Alec Baldwin) is a middle-aged architect who pays a wistful return visit to the Eternal City and witnesses younger architect Jack (Jesse Eisenberg) apparently repeating the same romantic mistake John made in his youth, dumping his sweet supportive girlfriend (Greta Gerwig) for her best friend, a neurotic but sexually dynamic actress, the unsaintly Monica (Ellen Page).

-- In the film's most fantastical scenario, Roberto Benigni plays Leopoldo, an anonymous, white-collar shmo who finds himself suddenly, inexplicably famous. While walking down the street, a news camera crew arbitrarily picks Leopoldo as an object of public fascination, grilling him on the most banal of matters: What did he have for breakfast? How does he take his toast? Leopoldo is baffled, but eventually his fame wins him the attention of beautiful younger women who can't wait to sleep with him. What's a shmo to do?

-- A newlywed couple on their honeymoon in Rome is separated when she gets lost in the city's labyrinthine streets. While waiting for her in their hotel room, fresh groom Antonio (Alessandro Tiberi) is visited by aggressive prostitute Anna (Penélope Cruz), who has shown up to the wrong room. When his conservative relatives arrive on the scene, he presses her to masquerade as his wife, even as his hapless bride Milly (Alessandra Mastronardi) stumbles onto a movie set and arouses the passions of a middle-aged actor lothario.

-- Allen himself plays Jerry, a retired New York opera impresario who has come with his wife (Judy Davis) to meet the Italian fiancé of their daughter (Alison Pill), but is soon distracted by the groom's father Giancarlo (Fabio Armiliato), an undertaker blessed with a sublime singing voice, but cursed with an inability to perform anywhere outside a shower stall.

Rather than taking each vignette at a time, Allen bounces from story to story, but the narrative hyperactivity doesn't prevent the film from stalling. The Benigni story offers a satire of that most irksome commodity of 21st century culture, the reality TV star, but beyond the one-joke premise offers no real pleasure, aside from the soothing notion that such fame is especially short-lived.

Cruz is the best reason to sit through the otherwise humdrum newlywed farce. The actress is Spanish, but her saucy voluptuous presence here proves she may be the closest contemporary actress to the Golden Age of the Italian lollapalooza la Sophia Loren and Claudia Cardinale. She's wonderful -- but she's not enough.

Baldwin may not be a guy willing to cop to his mistakes offscreen, but onscreen, he brings his seasoned, worldly presence to bear in the love-triangle tale, offering the voice of experience to a young man not unlike himself, and going maddeningly unheeded.

Allen gives the film's best comic payout to himself in the opera tale. It's a story that delivers some deliciously absurd images, but the most rewarding bits may be Allen doing what he does best: kvetching, worrying and cracking wise. Ever wonder what Alvy Singer, the wheedling hero of Annie Hall, might look like in his senior years?

Look no further than Rome.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Other voices

Selected excerpts from reviews of To Rome With Love:

Once upon a time, calling a movie "lesser Woody Allen" might be considered a slap in the face. Now, it's more-or-less expected.

-- James Berardinelli, ReelViews

Allen's story moves along quite wonderfully, primarily because of his nuanced casting.

-- Ricardo Baca, Denver Post

Most of the characters are archetypes, yet Allen treats them with genuine affection and avoids the bitterness that's marred much of his recent work.

-- Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader

It's minor Woody, but it's still Woody.

-- Tom Long, Detroit News

A charming but terribly self-indulgent trifle that's less than the sum of its many parts.

-- Ty Burr, Boston Globe

Not great, but not grating.

-- Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail

A film that sometimes comes off as an intersection of tangents, but it also gives rise to moments of joyous whimsy.

-- Kerry Lengel, Arizona Republic

The comedy is passable, and the way the stories play off each other provides enough to think about to be engaging.

-- Kyle Smith, New York Post

The best thing that can said about the picture is that it's a pleasant time-waster that also doubles as a travelogue for anyone interested in visiting Italy.

-- Peter Howell, Toronto Star

Somewhere in here is a real movie, but it's hard to find in all the mess (which, despite everything, is actually funny from time to time).

-- Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post

[It] generates no particular excitement or surprise, but it provides the sort of pleasure [Allen] seems able to generate almost on demand.

-- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

If you're expecting another Midnight in Paris -- and you may well in the first moments of the new film -- you will be disappointed.

-- Charlie McCollum, San Jose Mercury News

To Rome with Love is light and fast, with some of the sharpest dialogue and acting that he's put on the screen in years. The picture gently but surely moves back and forth between romantic comedy and satirical farce.

-- David Denby, New Yorker

Not as creative as Midnight in Paris, but it's a funny, quirky, frothy diversion.

-- Richard Roeper, Richard Roeper.com

Even loyal fans have to admit this isn't so much a movie as four little one-page New Yorker stories, strung together with Volare and one too many shots of the Trevi fountain.

-- Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger

An affectionate but meandering comedy that contemplates romance, fame, legacy and longing.

-- Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times

It's often frivolous and banal, though never tedious. It does offer moments of buoyant humour, farcical fun and consistently gorgeous cinematography.

-- Claudia Puig, USA Today

What's on screen is a collection of clichés intermingled with outlandish farce or surreal fantasy.

-- Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal

-- Compiled by Shane Minkin

Movie review

To Rome With Love

Starring Alec Baldwin, Penélope Cruz and Woody Allen

Grant Park

PG

112 minutes

2 1/2 stars out of five

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 13, 2012 D1