Review of When in Rome (2010) by Ben F — 20 Aug 2012

There are many reasons to explain why this movie is horrible in pretty much every aspect. Ranging from it's predictable story, to its horrible acting, and its amateur script. For some reason, I felt that something a little bit more technical made me resent this movie as much as I did. The truth is, not only was this film mishandled in all of those ways, but it wasn't filmed like a movie should be filmed. The way this film was shot, edited, and presented was so messy and abrasive, that it made me question who was behind its production. To put it simply, "When In Rome"feels like it was made by highschoolers. But don't you worry, this film had a lot more horrible things about it.

Basically this girl goes to Rome because her sister is getting married, but she's in search of true love herself. Nothing goes right for her until she meets this dreamy guy. And there's your plot. Yup, it's a disguisting recycled premise from 15 years ago that no one cares about. Thinking about the plot of this film makes my stomach turn, because it reminds me of how unoriginal and how stupid some people can be; thinking that creating yet another one of these movies would be a good idea.

The performances are absolutely atrocious. You coudn't ask for worse acting than what you got in this film. It was almost as if the production team demanded that everyone in the film gave the worst performances that they could possibly give. The worst comes from Kristen Bell, who's acting is completely nonexistent. She simply gives some high pitched tone to everyone of her lines and she attempts to give off the illusion that she's acting well. No one fell for it. She was garbage.

These movie's are always very disturbing to me, because you know that its all about one individual who's trying to become the next big actor. In this case, Kristen Bell is living off the minor success of her television show "Veronica Mars"and she thinks she has the ability to lead a romantic comedy. The audience has to bare witness to one sub-par actresses failed attempt to make it big; one horrible sequence at a time. It's like we're watching Bell attempt to please the people around her and the audience, but no one bites. I can't tell if its sickening, or depressing. Either way, its horrible.

As I said earlier, this film is shot in one of the most asburd ways. The visuals are belly aching to say the least. If we aren't feeling the need to vomit looking at them, than the aggresively bad editing makes you want to do the same thing. I have absolutely no idea why this film was this horrible technically. No clue. All I know is that these two aspects were asbolutely terrible.

"When in Rome" is unpleasent in almost every way imaginable. It has literally no positive aspects to it. Kristen Bell attempts to garner a new audience through her cheap one liners and poor voice overs, but as the film comes to a close, all the audience realizes is that they sat through a truly draconian work, funded by producers who have no concepts of quality, written by amateurs, and performed by people who think they are actors. A total and complete mess.