User Reviews

The film consists of four parallel stories that take place in Rome. Each story is a criticism of the entertainment industry. Likewise the total movie is a criticism in that it which incorporates an over abundance of Italian music and formulaic plots. Allen also adds his frequent themes of sex, love, death, and culture.

In one tale celebrity status is spoofed as an ordinary man suddenly is famous for being famous.

In another tale we see a Hollywood actress have an affair with her friend's boyfriend. This was classic Allen as Alec Baldwin plays the voice of intellect and reason within all of our heads, the one we ignore when a woman becomes a possible conquest.

A third tale includes Allen himself as a retired producer with bad ideas, but has convinced himself he is simply ahead of his time.

The fourth tale involves a small town woman almost seduced by a celebrity, while her husband attempts to pass off a prostitute as his wife.

While the stories ran parallel, they were connected through the use of sound track and common style, as if to say, all movies about Italy are the same. I feel the film would have been better if Allen had left off that fourth story and spent more time on the other three. The episode with Ellen Page and Jesse Eisenberg with Alec Baldwin was my favorite and I wish they had stretched that one out. That was more of the old classic Woody Allen that I love. Perhaps if I was familiar with "The Decameron" I would have liked this film more.

Parental Guide: 1 F-bomb (thank you Ellen); no nudity. Implied sex and sex talk.

The opening sequence of this film filled me with hope....Rome, probably my favorite city in the world, seen through the awestruck eyes of Woody Allen....unfortunately, until the equally magnificent closing scene, he doesn't really make Rome an integral part of his stories....of course there are a few token references to the Collosseum and the Vatican, but also a few too many interior shots. Woody himself, at age 77, is still the funniest performer in the film, AND of course he gives himself most of the best lines as well ("He does it for pleasure, not for money" - "Well, there is a lot of pleasure IN money"!). But while his segment is pretty funny, it's also basically one-joke. The segment with the Italian couple moving to the big city begins well and the couple is appealing, but it goes astray when it turns into a story of double infidelity; this could have been handled either as an all-out farce or as a serious drama, but Allen seems, rather disagreeably, to imply that the whole incident was beneficial to the couple! Nevertheless, this segment includes the three loveliest women in the film, the adorable up-and-coming Alessandra Mastronardi, the getting-hotter-every-year Penelope Cruz, and a cameo by the ageless Ornella Muti! (she should have had a bigger part). The segment with the American couple who find their relationship tested by the arrival of the girl's uninhibited best female friend feels mostly artificial and unconvincing - perhaps because Ellen Page never quite succeeds in looking like a strong enough temptation for Jesse Eisenberg to abandon Gret Gerwig. As for the Roberto Benigni segment, it's pointless, unfunny and repetitive. When I saw "Il Mostro" at the theater in the mid-1990s, the audience was roaring with laughter; during 90% of Benigni's scenes in "To Rome With Love" the audience was dead quiet. Overall, a lightweight disappointment from Woody, though not without moments of pleasure for his fans. ** out of 4.

During Woody Allen's European vacation, he has made four stops in London, visited Barcelona, dropped for a short visit to New York City, spent one summer in Paris, and then he had Roman Holiday last summer. All the tourist attractions of the Eternal City are in full display in Allen's film and they are spectacular: the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps, the Coliseum, and panoramic views of the city from above, the rain at night, and outdoor cafés. Like in Paris' movie before that, Darius Khondji's camera finds unexpected and hidden angles of famous Rome beauty. The sound of wonderful melodic Italian songs and arias are heard everywhere -and what is Italy or Rome without music? Four different stories in which the Romans and the visitors are involved play against this joyous background of Rome glowing under summer sun. It seems that Allen created a mini Decameron. The stories do not overlap, but they have in common Rome and love in Rome to Rome.

Comparison with last year Allen's film about Paris certainly arises, but as Paris and Rome are two very different cities, even though both are famous, beautiful and often serve as a background or even an important character in the movie ("Fellini's Rome," and "Paris, I Love You", for example), so the Allen's movies about Paris and Rome are quite different. The Roman film, in my opinion, lacks rare magic and brilliance of "Midnight in Paris." The reason seems to be in switching from one story to another, and there are, as I've mentioned, four of them. Each is funny and attractive in its own way, but as the whole they failed to produce magic. As the rule, all stories in an anthology can't be on the same level. The story of Leopoldo, for instance, had intriguing premise but then just lost some of its steam.

Definite plus - for the first time in the last six years, Allen is in front of the camera as well as behind it. Allen knows a secret of physical comedy. He can simply stay in the frame, even in the background and keep silent, and his face will express a range of feelings and emotions, the predominant being a mixture of confusion and dumbfoundedness. Some might say that we've seen it all before but I don't mind. Allen is a good comedian who always makes me smile and laugh. And the same can be said of his Roman film. Allen does not do anything new here but the movie is good. For example, the idea of introducing a singer with the great voice who can only sing in the shower was original and smart. The film is funny, witty, beautiful, bright, and very light, feather-light. Its creator is 76 years but you hardly believe it when he sends us on Roman holiday.

My conclusion - any Allen's movie, even average comparing to his best work, is worth watching. If you are a die-hard fan like me, you've seen it already. I've said many times before and I repeat again - even the average Woody Allen's movie is better than most cookie-cutter comedies released by big studios. If you are not a fan, give "To Rome with Love" a chance, you may fell in love with it. This is the first anthology by Allen for many years and I'm sure you'll like if not four by some of the stories. I am personally delighted by the story of the owner of the funeral home, who sang like Caruso and Pavarotti, but only in the shower, to the sound of pouring water while lathering his back. Or, perhaps, you'll like a surreal story of a simple Roman office employee, who one sunny day out of sudden became insanely famous and popular. Moreover, he could not figure out what actually happened and what exactly he did or did not do? Real celebrities and the crowds of the journalists all listened to his every word as the highest wisdom. Or you may click with the story of Jack, a young American architect -student, his girlfriend, and her best friend - a heart-breaker, of Jack's inner voice played by Alec Baldwin. Well, if you cannot stand Allen, I'll let you in on a secret, if you do not know by now. There is also Penelope Cruz in the role of Anna (I think Woody bowed to Anna Magnani's "Mother Rome" and Sophia Loren - Filomena from "Marriage: Italian Style") and it is impossible to take the eyes off her. Anna - is the character from the fourth story which is about newlyweds who came to Rome for a honeymoon from the small town and the cheerful confusion that occurred when the young bride stepped out of the hotel and got lost in the maze of the Rome's streets. If the presence of Cruz in her second Allen's film is still not enough for you, well, then I do not even know what to say. Only that you should choose for your Roman holiday another Rome, not the one that Woody Allen created.

The Eternal City gets a different kind of travelogue treatment here: a visit by a spectrum of Woody Allen representations. This is Rome seen through the prism of its creator. The framing song is the familiar old hit parade topper, Volare. That defines the perspective as an American of Woody Allen's age - who would remember that song from the Ed Sullivan Show. It was the rare foreign language song to become an American pop hit Allen's character serves a double function. As Jerry, tourist Hayley's father, he deploys his familiar nebbish persona, nervous on the plane, suspicious of Hayley's new fiancee, an Italian leftist. He's also a failed music director. His long-suffering wife cares enough to define the reviewer's "imbecile" as "ahead of your time." But like Allen, Jerry has a good eye for talent. With more bravery than most: his Pagliacci brilliantly performs entirely inside a working shower. As the conventional opera unfolds exuberantly around him, he performs in his shower box, washing and lathering as he sings, superbly. That lunatic staging choice is an actual necessity. His tenor can only sing well in the shower. This image resonates further: in an apparently conventional staging something personal operates in a private box within, weird but vital. Like the Allen element in any story he tells. It may seem odd but it's necessary. An alternative Allen surrogate opens the film. The Rome traffic director functions like a director: "My job, as you can see, is to see that the traffic move. I stand up here, and I see everything. All people. I see life. In this city, all is a story....There are many stories, next time you come." On behalf of director Allen he introduces the characters and concludes the story. Robert Benigni plays another Allen, a modest little man thrust into the ordeal of celebrity. TV makes him a sudden star - for being so ordinary. He enjoys promotion, public attention, the service of beautiful women, but he's finally relieved when the spotlight moves on and he can return to his modest family. One might take this as an ironic reversal of the scandal/attention that drove Allen from the US to this cycle of European films. A similar personal reflection may lie in the story of two newlywed provincials whose move to Rome is complicated by their separate adulteries. Those unconventional sexual experiences have the salutary effect of enabling them to see past the surface allure of Rome. They return to the simpler lives, especially enriched by their respective sexual experiences. Their illicit adventures deepened their relationship. The other plot has two Allen surrogates. Alex Baldwin is the mature man who returns to the Rome of his student days and through Jessie Eisenberg relives a doomed old romance. The interplay of past and present is a familiar Allen device, especially apt in the Eternal City which unchanged has survived centuries of human waves. The woman the mature man warns the younger not to fall in love with is precisely the kind of enchanting, bright but disastrously neurotic beauty Allen was prone to fall for (as he recounts in his current memoir). As another signature, the "Ozymandias melancholia" is revived from Stardust Memories. Perhaps lacking the moral intensity of Allen's best films, this is still a delight, engaging, rich, amusing, and as this reading proposes - subtly personal.

As the extra on the DVD explains, Woody Allen is a fan of the older Italian movies and wanted to do an homage of sorts, to make a movie in Rome with some of the Italian style and comedy represented in those older movies.

He has several, independent, parallel stories going on, each with its own quirks. I like Woody himself in small doses and here he has one of the roles, as a dad, recently retired from the classical music business, traveling to Rome to see his daughter and meet her Italian fiancée. Most of the humor involves Giancarlo, the father of the fiancée, and the actor is Fabio Armiliato, who in actuality is a well-respected operatic tenor. He is an undertaker and they discover that he sings really well in the shower, but only does so-so in the audition that he very reluctantly goes to. The solution is funny, they modify well-known operas so that he always sings while taking a shower, and the audience loves him.

Roberto Benigni, of "Life Is Beautiful" fame, plays Leopoldo, a lowly clerk, who one day is unexpectedly confronted by cameras and microphones, for no apparent reason everyone takes an interest in every detail of his life, what he eats for breakfast, what kind of shaving cream he uses, whether he wears briefs or boxers. He is very annoyed. Of course it is Woody's comment on people who become "famous for being famous" with no basis. Later when people lose interest in him he misses the attention and tries to get it back.

There is a bit about a young aspiring architect meeting up with an architect who had, like the young architect, lived in the same area of Rome 30 years earlier. Now he is known for designing shopping centers.

Another bit is about a young couple taking their honeymoon in Rome and getting separated, he meeting up with a hooker, she with a hotel robber, then finding out they would rather lead a more normal life away from Rome.

You can look for deep meaning in Woody Allen films but to me there isn't any, just some humorous scenes and characters that more often than not are a commentary on some facet of our everyday lives. But examined from a unique Woody Allen angle.

An aside, for years Woody Allen has insisted that his movies have a "mono" soundtrack, because that is the way it was at movie houses. Yes it "was", many years ago. But modern movie houses have incorporated some form of "surround sound" for years now. Well this movie, "To Rome With Love" has a Dolby 5.1 surround sound track. And when I went back to check, "Midnight in Paris" (2011) did too. But every movie before that is listed with a "mono" sound. It is nice to see Woody Allen has finally accepted modern sound design, it makes the movie much more enjoyable.

To Rome With Love (2012): Dir: Woody Allen / Cast: Woody Allen, Roberto Benigni, Alec Baldwin, Penelope Cruz, Jesse Eisenberg: Romantic comedy about the idea of Rome as a romantic symbol when in fact it contains every bit as many problems as any other place. Woody Allen and Judy Davis play a married couple flying to Rome to meet their daughter's fiancé. Their daughter is a journalist while her fiancé's father is a mortician whom Allen learns has a talent for singing opera. The problem is that this talent is restricted to the shower. This plays out as one of the great hilarious payoffs when Allen presents the most awkward stage plays. Roberto Benigni plays an ordinary guy who is suddenly hounded by paparazzi who ask him the most absurd details into his life. It is Allen's humorous attack on fame and its illusions. Alec Baldwin seems to be everywhere when it comes to coaching a young heart throb who is about to cheat on his girlfriend with her best friend, an aspiring actress who has just arrived in town. Penelope Cruz plays a prostitute who ends up in the wrong hotel room and mistaken as the fiancé of someone who is set to meet relatives. His real fiancé is lost within the city and loses her cell phone, but she becomes the target of romance by a famous actor and this leads to the most hysterical burglary attempt ever conspired. Jesse Eisenberg seems to be observing it all, hanging out with Baldwin enlightening each other. This is Woody Allen at his best as he presents witty dialogue, comic encounters at their most inspiring, and a view of Rome that paints a far different picture than reputed. Score: 10 / 10

I've said it before and I'll say it again - you can't churn out movies the way Woody Allen does and not have a few clinkers along the way. To Rome with Love is not a masterpiece, but it has some good scenes.

Set in beautiful, breathtaking Rome, the film tells four stories: A retired opera director (Allen) visiting his daughter and her new fiancée discovers the boy's father can sing like Caruso; a prostitute (Penelope Cruz) is mistaken for a man's wife by his family; the man's wife is quite naive, ends up on a film studio and is taken to the apartment of one of her favorite actors; a man (Alec Baldwin) returns to the place of his youth and serves as the conscience/adviser to a young man (Jesse Eisenberg) about to fall for his girlfriend's friend (Ellen Page). And a director (Roberto Benigni) becomes an overnight celebrity and is hounded everywhere he goes.

Some of these worked better than others. I'm partial to the opera singer story - Allen and Judy Davis play Jerry and Phyllis, the parents of Hayley (Allison Pitt), and her future father-in-law, Giancarlo, is portrayed by opera star Fabio Armiliato. Giancarlo's voice is magnificent, but only when he's in a shower, so Allen comes out of retirement (which he is dying to do) and stages a Pagliacci with Canio in a portable, decorated shower.

My second favorite is the newlyweds, featuring Alessandro Tiberi as Antonio, Penelope Cruz as Anna, and Alessandra Mastronadi as Milly. This is the most "Italian" part of the film and perhaps the most successful. Milly leaves the hotel, becomes terribly lost, and loses her cell phone. While she's wandering around, Anna (Cruz) enters Antonio and Milly's hotel room, mistaking it for the room she was to go to, and starts trying to kiss Antonio on the bed, just as Antonio's relatives arrive. His uncle mistakes her for Milly, and she goes along with it.

Milly, meanwhile, finds herself at a movie studio and meets her favorite actor, who wants to seduce her. Everyone winds up at the same restaurant together.

I didn't find the acting all that great, particularly in the beginning; it seemed very artificial, though later, I didn't find that as much. I frankly found the Jesse Eisenberg-Ellen Page story a little annoying, as I did the Robert Begnini one. By the way, Penelope Cruz in a tight-fitting, short red dress was drop dead gorgeous.

All in all, worth seeing. I think Allen always has something to offer and even at his age is trying new techniques and new cities.

This is a funny comedy although, as the film goes on, it becomes very intricated and the various plots that are within the film gets too much unreal and sex based.