Salt Lake Tribune Review
If there's a Hollywood playbook for romantic comedies, "When in Rome" copies every play.
This predictable comedy starring "Veronica Mars'"
Kristen Bell and "Transformers" hunk
Josh Duhamel offers a love story with a checklist of escapist-movie clichés ready for easy consumption.
Thankfully, Bell and Duhamel are a likable enough pair, even if he stands a good foot taller than his female lead.
Bell plays Beth, a Guggenheim museum curator who has given all hope of finding that elusive love of her life. She's attending her sister's wedding in Rome when she meets Nick (Duhamel), a newspaper sports columnist.
Thinking he has another girlfriend, however, the heartbroken and drunken Beth walks into a magical Italian fountain of love and steals several coins tossed in by other hopeless singles looking for romance (a la the 1954 film "Three Coins in the Fountain").
What she doesn't know is that the men who wished on those coins are now under her spell (a convenient Italian myth made up just for this story).
That group of love-lost men is a hodgepodge of recognizable faces:
Will Arnett ("Arrested Development") as a struggling painter,
Danny DeVito ("It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia") as a sausage vendor,
Dax Shepard ("Punk'd") as a vain model, and "Napoleon Dynamite's"
Jon Heder as a street magician.
Back in New York, Nick tries to hook up with Beth again, but her new group of obsessed suitors keep running interference.
The setup really is just the framework for a romantic comedy with all the well-worn characters and plot points: There's Beth's loyal girlfriend, Nick's beer-guzzling best friend, the race against time to get the girl, and the kind of slapstick gags audiences have laughed at for decades.
Is there any doubt that Nick and Beth will get together before the end credits roll? I'll let you figure that out, but with a movie as calculated as this, it doesn't take long to see where this couple is headed.
At least Bell and Duhamel make an attractive couple, a glamorous pair that seem to pull off the illusion they like each other.
But as the title suggests, "when in Rome, do as the Romans do," and so it goes for this kind of manufactured movie. When in Hollywood, do as the Hollywood directors do -- and never stray from the path.
-- Vince Horiuchi
The rundown: The likable
Kristen Bell and
Josh Duhamel star in a well-worn romantic comedy that follows all the rules. 91 minutes. (VH)
Synopsis: Disillusioned with romance during her whirlwind trip to Rome, an ambitious New Yorker defiantly swipes a few magic coins from a foolish wishing fountain, inadvertently igniting the passions of a motley crew of suitors as she's pursued by a handsome reporter with charm to spare. Beth (
Kristen Bell) is at a point in her life where love seems like a luxury she just can't afford. Years of waiting for that perfect romance has made Beth bitter, and one day, while vacationing in Rome, she cynically plucks a handful of coins from a local fountain of love. Almost immediately thereafter, Beth finds herself fending off the advances of a diminutive sausage magnate (
Danny DeVito), a lanky street magician (
Jon Heder), a doting painter (
Will Arnett), and a narcissistic male model (
Dax Shepard). Meanwhile, a smitten reporter (
Josh Duhamel) does his best to convince Beth that true love isn't just a topic of fairy tales and romance novels.~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
