Susan Granger’s review of “When in Rome” (Touchstone Pictures)
Be very wary of any movie poster that features a winsome blonde biting her pinkie. That’s the primary lesson learned from this wretched romantic comedy in which cutesy nail-nibbling is supposed to be seductive.
Guggenheim Museum curator Beth (Kristen Bell) is unhappy. She works for an authoritarian boss (Anjelica Huston), her parents (Peggy Lipton, Don Johnson) are divorced and she’s dumped by her longtime beau (Lee Pace) in the middle of an art gala. To add to her misery, her younger sister Joan (Alexis Dziena) is marrying Umberto (Luca Calvani) in Rome. That’s where she meets Nick (Josh Duhamel), the Best Man, a sports reporter who shares her cynicism. Convinced that she’ll never meet Mr. Right and far too inebriated to exercise good judgment, Beth visits an enchanted Trevi-like fountain where, instead of tossing in coin and making a wish, she wades in and takes five coins out. That’s a big mistake because the guys who once owned those coins are destined to fall in love with her and stalk her throughout Manhattan. There’s the struggling artist (Will Arnett) who paints an enormous nude portrait of Beth on the side of a building, the self-centered model (Dax Shepard), the street magician (Jon Heder) and the sausage tycoon (Danny DeVito) bearing a basket of “encased meats.” Meanwhile, what about Prince Charming – a.k.a. klutzy Nick? Will he turn out to be Beth’s true love? Guess.
Having graduated from TV’s “Veronica Mars,” Kristen Bell deserves better than the cringe-worthy, chick-flick fantasy drivel dumped on her by screenwriters David Diamond and David Weissman, who not only devise caricatures instead of characters but also seem to confuse the duties of a museum curator with those of a party-planner or event coordinator. And why did director Mark Steven Johnson (“Ghost Rider”) cast this tiny waif opposite tall Josh Duhamel (“Win a Date with Tad Hamilton”) because their height disparity makes for an awkward pairing? On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “When in Rome” is an inept 3. This frothy, predictable rom-com deserves exile.
