Review of When in Rome (2010) by Chads — 31 Jan 2010

It isn't 1953 anymore, the year William Wyler's "Roman Holiday" hit the silver screen, when women, many of them without careers, could fly to Italy for romance and adventure. Beth(Kristen Bell), a working woman, a single woman, doesn't have the luxury of taking a two-week vacation.

She's busy, in demand, but her boss reluctantly gives this curator for the Guggenheim Museum two days to attend her sister's wedding, much to the detriment of "When in Rome". At first, the film's sudden shift back to American soil jars, since the title evokes memories of Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn on a scooter, then disappoints, as the fallout from Beth's theivery at the Fountain of Love, one suspects, had a better chance of working in a romantic locale such as Rome.

As it stands, the story labors under the pretense of serendipity, in which Beth's potential suitors had known that their match-made-in-heaven was waiting for them in New York. Not counting Nick(Josh Dushamel), the moviegoer has to suffer through not one, or two, but three "meet-cutes".

Too bad Beth wasn't unemployed so she could ward off her spellbound admirers in a setting where their persistence for romance seems less like stalking. "When in Rome" contains scenes that remind the moviegoer of decidedly urbane movies such as "The Silence of the Lambs"(actually the bit in the restaurant is quite funny) and "Dressed to Kill", cinematic evocations that are counterproductive to the light comic tone of Italian farce which the filmmaker doesn't quite pull off.