I viewed Allen's latest film on dvd from Netflix the other day and was pleasantly surprised with it. I hadn't seen any previews and had only read the NY Times review of the film when it first came out last year. I hadn't seen Allen actually star in any of his own films in quite a while and if you like him as a comedy writer/director/performer, you'll have a good time with this film. Not as (brilliantly) written as his Oscar winning 'Midnight in Paris' the year before, but still a very entertaining film with several (for me) laugh-out-loud scenes; (hey, what more can you ask for?) It's quite funny and I even enjoyed Roberto Benigni who I cannot stand to watch on screen. Allen made him enjoyable for me. In the trailer I supply here, you'll see a Roman Traffic Officer standing in front of The Victor Emmanuelle monument ('the big white wedding cake') talking to the viewing audience. I know he's an actor but I recall on my very first trip to Rome I attempted to open up my tripod to put my camcorder on it and film the traffic and the officer. At that time, the officer shouted out to me to not open it as the tripod's legs would trip someone walking behind. He was right of course because the pedestrian walkways were narrow and behind iron fences to keep them out of the racing traffic which was speeding all around. So - I moved.
I saw this back in July with a very appreciate and boisterous crowd--of mostly sixty-year-old women! I thought I was at a Neil Diamond concert.
The film had its moments, with Woody getting off some one liners that I loved and it was great to see him back on screen. I like Judy Davis as his wife and she is a knockout in everything I've ever seen her in. Great actress.
I wasn't crazy about the Penelope Cruz segment, or at least the way it ended, and the Roberto segment could have been cut a bit. Just a couple of disappointing endings to some promising premises. When I get the DVD I am sure my views will soften a bit. I wish more had been done with the opera singer's son and his contentious interactions with Woody's character but I guess that would have been even more jumbled unless the other segments were shortened.
Even when a Woody film doesn't do it for me, there is still plenty for me to enjoy. I had never seen Jesse Eisenberg in anything, but he made for a nice "Would Be Woody." Alec Baldwin provided WASPy gravitas and had some of the film's best lines. I love the way Allen characters dress. I *always* notice the clothes the Woody characters have on. I am also interested in the backgrounds he gives to his characters, who are often involved in publishing or the arts. That is the world he knows so when he casts actors as construction workers or other professions they often come out broader than those he has within the confines of the art and publishing worlds. It's all part of Allen's template and which provides a strange sort of "comfort" in every movie. The way characters deliver their lines. There is no mistaking it for anyone but Woody Allen.
More to come as my mind reluctantly sparks itself to something resembling coherent thought.
"You know in a mental institution they sometimes give a person some clay or some basket weaving?" It's the therapy of moviemaking that has been good in my life. If you don't work, it's unhealthy—for me, particularly unhealthy. I could sit here suffering from morbid introspection, ruing my mortality, being anxious. But it's very therapeutic to get up and think, Can I get this actor; does my third act work? All these solvable problems that are delightful puzzles, as opposed to the great puzzles of life that are unsolvable, or that have very bad solutions. So I get pleasure from doing this. It's my version of basket weaving."
“To Rome with Love” — an insult to Romans. Allen’s using celebrity, the paparatzzi, adultery and “You Gotta Have A Gimmick” from “Gypsy” to mock the Eternal City as a cesspool of Berlusconi fools. As you watch you’re trying to believe nothing you’re seeing is really this deliberate, that he could push such crap, but any director using the empty bag of tricks that is Robert Benigni hasn’t much of a defense. And his pictorial view of the city is so sallow that you desperately want a splash of Technicolor to ward off more disease. (Many of us felt contagious from the jaundice of “Midnight in Paris.”) Nothing in this movie has any legitimate right to be in anything but a toilet; Allen is heaving up sour vino.
“To Rome with Love” — an insult to Romans. Allen’s using celebrity, the paparatzzi, adultery and “You Gotta Have A Gimmick” from “Gypsy” to mock the Eternal City as a cesspool of Berlusconi fools. As you watch you’re trying to believe nothing you’re seeing is really this deliberate, that he could push such crap, but any director using the empty bag of tricks that is Robert Benigni hasn’t much of a defense. And his pictorial view of the city is so sallow that you desperately want a splash of Technicolor to ward off more disease. (Many of us felt contagious from the jaundice of “Midnight in Paris.”) Nothing in this movie has any legitimate right to be in anything but a toilet; Allen is heaving up sour vino.
