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Massawyrm realizes that choosing WHEN IN ROME over at-home self-surgery was a bad call!
Hola all. Massawyrm here.
There are really only a few things you need to know about WHEN IN ROME. The first is that it was written by the cancer-curing brain trust that brought you OLD DOGS, Davids Diamond & Weissman. And the second is that the script – no doubt written by these founding fathers on sheepskin parchment and handled on set by the only three virgins still living in California – was directed by Mark Steven Johnson, the man behind such classics as SIMON BIRCH and GHOST RIDER. Once you understand those two painful truths, you can begin to imagine the howling torment that this movie is capable of. Historically, January is a dumping ground for the industry’s worst movies – too terrible to see the light of day but too expensive to dump straight to video. In recent years, thanks in part to CLOVERFIELD, Hollywood has discovered that it is a month in which hits can be made, particularly in genre. So, for the most part, this year has been an experimentation year relatively free of the usual dump films – until now.
There isn’t one redeeming thing to found anywhere in this film. I can see a few ideas that might have been funny were they properly developed, but all told this is a classic example of a talented cast going to complete and utter waste in the hands of people unsure what exactly to do with them. The idea is a simple and sadly poorly executed one. Kristen Bell plays Beth, your run of the mill, featureless, rom-com protagonist. She’s a beautiful, work obsessed, modern gal with a really cool job – her only defining feature – who just can’t find the time to find the right man. To punctuate that it is her devotion to her job and not her social awkwardness that keeps her from settling down, she even has a mousey, plain jane assistant who appears more like Marcie from the Peanuts Gang than anyone else, reminding us that it’s not that she can’t GET a man, she just can’t KEEP one.
Enter the magical Roman fountain – yes you read that right – that not only can make people fall in love with one another, but also seems to be able to bend the laws of time and fucking space. When our little cardboard character gets frustrated with her inability to score, she gets drunk, bitter and starts plucking coins from the love fountain, causing every man whose coin she’s grabbed to fall in love with her. Fortunately for the sake of the film, all five of the men who put coins in the fountain IN FUCKING ROME ITALY also happen to magically show back up in New York City as residents. Unfortunately for the rest of us, Cupid no longer seems interested in the subtleties of romance, and instead sets loose a wild pack of stalkers on her ass.
In the right hands, this could have been a cute and clever comedy – one about a girl who has four coins and five suitors and needs to figure out which one is the real love. But no. She has five coins and one of the most blatantly telegraphed set ups for a third act twist I have ever seen in my entire life. It’s bad enough that you see it coming a mile off, but the fact that they somehow think you haven’t already figured it out and try to build genuine tension from it is enough to make you want to drive a screwdriver through your eye. The rest of the film from the moment Bell returns from Italy in the first act is about watching the goofy situations she ends up in at the hands of deranged, almost entirely unhinged suitors throwing themselves at her in ways that would get most people arrested.
Josh Duhamel plays the romantic lead who fortunately shares genuine chemistry with Bell, making the movie survivable, if still unwatchable. But Will Arnett, Jon Heder, Dax Shepard, and Danny DeVito all play over the top cartoons, each humiliating himself in one way or another – Heder most of all as he not only completely fumbles the film’s one clever character (a parody amalgam of Criss Angel and David Blaine), but goes so far as to make callbacks to his Napoleon Dynamite success by starring opposite Efren ‘Pedro’ Ramirez…for no apparent reason other than to make callbacks to his Napoleon Dynamite success.
Beyond predictable, this film gives away the few advantages it is playing with early on to make a painfully cloying, shoddy entry into the magical rom-com subgenre. There isn’t a thing about this movie worth mentioning in a positive light. Not one. Look, I like Mark Steven Johnson. I still hold the director’s cut of DAREDEVIL to be an underappreciated film and proof of what Johnson could get away with at a studio that had no idea how to make a superhero film. But Jesus, man. I didn’t think he was capable of making a worse movie than GHOST RIDER or SIMON BIRCH. But he just did. Seriously, avoid this movie at all costs. It has a very strong shot of ending up on my Worst of the Year list.
Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.
Massawyrm
Got something for the Wyrm? Mail it here.
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Is awesome and highly underated. One of the best, way better than any of Raimi's Spidershit movies, and XMEN 1,3,4.
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I predict that one of these weeks (Not too soon; it'll have to wait until it reaches the cheap moviehouse), my mother will go see this, enjoy it, and pronounce it "cute".
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If you go see this one! Being married for over 13 years allows me to go: "Oh HELLZ nah!" when the wife asks if I want to see something like this!
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Not sure which is less suprising, that the movie might not be great or that Massy didn't like it. Really even from the preview and with Bell, I still knew it would be below average. Less suprising is the Massy didn't like it. I would like to hear a list of the RomComs he does like. Natural Born Killers, True Romance, Bonnie and Clyde?
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Mark Steven Johnson make a BAD movie?? No way! Didn't see that coming!... No-sir-ee. Not at all. Nope...
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...from the moment I saw the first trailer this had that Simply Irresistable stank all over it.
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how all of your problems can be solved by my penis.
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. . . w/ just that tool from Transformers in it. But I just saw an ad in a magazine showing it also has Dax Shephard AND that Napoleon Dynamite douche. This has pitch black bloody stool written all over it. So of course Massa is reviewing it.
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It's like reading an Amish magazine's fashion review, or tales from a Muslim wine tasting tour. Are rom-coms really aimed at the critics or readers of sites like AICN? The only rom-coms ive ever endured are at the requirement of my wife, as quip-pro-quo for having her watch a movie with explosions, aliens, or large animals that eat people. They are all painful. But they have an audience that likes them, and none of those are likely to be writing reviews here, or bothering to watch them. Same with the children's movies that are bashed here. I'm not talking Pixar or Myazaki anime. I'm talking Alvin and the Chipmunks. Awful movie - but were pop-song sining cgi chipmunks ever going to appeal to movie geeks? Ever? Next time, if all that is coming out that week is a Rom-Com or Fox studios children's movie, pick up a copy of Blade Runner, Poltergeist, or Akira, and do a new review on an old movie. It will have a lot more relevance than any review of When In Rome, on this site. My opinion, anyway
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...So when it airs on basic cable in a few years, I'll watch a few minutes of it here and there as I'm cleaning the house, putting up shelves, or painting.
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...Or a show on Food Network called "Orthodox Rabbi Goldstein's Carolina Bar-B-Q Tour!"
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Jan 28, 2010 9:11:45 AM CST
At the end of the day, the DC of Daredevil still has
by bruce of all trades
that retarded playground fight, Colin Farrell hamming it up like there's no tomorrow, a Kingpin who's directed to act more cartoony than he was in that Spider-Man animated series (great character in that one, btw... why don't the studios watch that stuff as a guide?) and a really gay alternative rock soundtrack. Sorry Wyrm, but Mark Steven Johnson sucks all around. There is no redeeming feature in any of his filmography. Fuck him and his shit eating grin.
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Its almost as if Daredevil is a comic book movie that is just like a comic book!
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CGI action. Not good. Why the hell did 'The Dark Knight', which wasn't a bad movie, rip it off?
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True. And "When Harry Met Sally" had some cute moments. But two movies in 21 years does not redeem a whole genre that has around two-dozen flicks a year released.
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but I really doubt it's THAT'S bad.
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A breath of fresh air in the rom-com genre. It was painfully realistic - especially since I literally just went through the same thing - but despite conjuring up pleasent/ awful memories, it was just a really solid flick all around. It used a lot of odd indie-esque techniques to tell the story, but it actually worked.
Oh and Stlcat71, you may not recall this but, but Massawyrm gave a glowing review to GHOSTS OF GIRLFRIENDS PAST. No joke. Utterly embarrasing. -
The difference between the Aint It Cool reviewers and the talkbackers is that the talkbackers don't get excited when shit like Ghostrider gets announced. They rip it a new asshole. The reviewers cream their little panties at these announcements then snort at it after the fact. Fucking Ghostrider. Give me strength.
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"The only rom-coms ive ever endured are at the requirement of my wife..." You just answered your own question. It's reviewed here so that when someone tries to drag an AICN reader to this fetid POS, we can jab our chubby, Cheetoh-oranged fingers in the general direction of the nearest computer and say, "MmmMMM, no! The internet told me it's bad!"
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Was horrible. The Foggy Nelson storyline did nothing but give Foggy Nelson something to do for the rest of the movie. I thought it just made the movie incredibly boring and distracting. It gave Matt Murdoc some more scenes but that's really all. Daredevil will always be the movie that should have been better, it had potential, but Mark Steven Johnson is talentless. Btw, is there a scene where Kristen Bell throws herself off a building while whipping something at the screen? Also I like Kristen Bell, she's hot and could be great if given the right role, but in something like this she's just expendable.
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No love lost for the chin bitch.
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Jan 28, 2010 10:17:34 AM CST
I never was interested in this surely-will-be-crap film
by marksman230591
but I have to admit, Kristen Bell's pretty damn hot. But unlike Twilight fangirls, I don't go to the movies just for the pretty boy (in this case, hot chick) that's in the leading role. Thanks for confirming my expectations with this film, Massa.
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I had a cauliflower ear after a rugby match and decided to drain it myself with an insulin needle. It worked but came back with a vengeance. My ear swelled up to 3 times its normal size and I had to get surgery eventually. If I had to choose between going through that again or watch ‘When in Rome’ I would probably choose the latter.
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thanks to other reviews at AICN.
But still, it makes you wonder, just how good are these guys at sucking cock, that these lame ass no talent fuckwads keep getting employed? -
It has quotes like "5 Stars", "Best movie this year", "Funniest movie ever". Are these quotes from Film Critics, whether they be respectable or quotewhores? No, they are from Facebook comments. The only positive publicity this film has been able to get is from people on Facebook. Movie may look like crap but, hey, MikeD loved it, so it must be good.
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I have seen far worse movies, far worse comic book movies in fact.
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That was funny.
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Some comics just don't work well when made translated to the screen then, I guess.
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Go fuck yourselves.
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When the son from Nip/Tuq circumcised himself. Anyway I forget her last name, but the chiq who's the bride in this fliq is really pretty, I remember she was one of if not the only Reason I could sit through Fool's Gold. Did she do anything substantial in When in Rome?
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You set it up like a romantic comedy, even advertise it as one. And then when the chicks show up to see it opening night, it turns out that when the girl pining for love picks out the coins from the fountain, the guys actually do turn into crazed stalkers who wipe out everything and everyone in her life trying to get to her. And then they turn on each other. I remember reading a sci-fi short story about exactly how poorly it could turn out for you if you developed a medical procedure that would stimulate the pleasure centers of another person every time they "served" you - and it could turn out very badly indeed.
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...or whatever the spelling or his current username is. Didn't he even do a [pre]review of this since he's a professional KB stalker, er, fan?
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My mom (and most non-geeky girls) are the same way. There are two types of movies: "cute" which means it was good, and "weird", which means it was bad.
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Any idea as to the title and/or author of that story? I'd read it.
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Right you are. I'm usually able to use her as an early warning system for those few movies I don't have an immediate sense/preconception of. If mom likes it--Stay Away!!!
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Just to top off the second string cast? C'mon, Dax Shepard...Jon Heder..etc.etc.etc.
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I guess Earl Dittman was busy that week.
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a marketing genius, riding the success of Avatar atop a month of pretty much crap releases. I think Mel might just topple it, just barely, this weekend.
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Four of the guys are gay, and each one of them is only interested in the girl because they're interested in getting closer to one of the other four guys following the girl around. At the end the four gay guys get their true matches (each other), and the girl gets the remaining guy who legitimately loves her.
Is that about right? -
You all know this to be true.
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you know, perhaps in the not too distant future, my girl would've gotten be to watch this....but knowing NOW that it's directed by Mark Johnson..NEVER EVER EVER.
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The problem is that it was in one of the Dozois anthologies that come out every year. And those run together in my mind after a while, and it's hard to distinguish one year from the other or to remember all the short story titles.
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It kind of sucked. Monster chases kids around city before finally killing them.
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Less hyped and while predictable, it was charming and made us (date night w/ wife) get on a plane to Ireland and just move there (oh if we could). "Rome" is just dopey with forced slapstick. Like Kristen Bell in "Veronica Mars" and elsewhere but not in this, while Duhamel is lost.
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Jan 28, 2010 3:53:25 PM CST
Yes wyrm i too remember the at-home self surgery commercial
by takingscorpioscalls
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it was Dad's birthday - so I was SO NOT AT THIS SCREENING!
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that now matter how many movies she makes, Kristen Bell will never, EVER find a better role than Veronica Mars. She better get used to the next couple decades playing the girlfriend and/or lead in generic romcom crap like this.
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I almost slit my throat in that movie!
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Screech is a bitch. He hates the Big Lebowski and thinks Gigli is underrated. And he tells this to strangers working at bookstores.
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Jan 29, 2010 8:14:05 PM CST
pensey FINALLY got arrested for online and realtime stalking her
by jay2517
Great if u ask me...
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on a clause in their contracts that allows them to bail when films are assigned to shit directors
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All his work is crap. Both cuts of DD were CRAP. ACCEPT IT GEEK NATION. THE REASON WE KEEP GETTING SO MUCH SHIT IN GENRE PROJECTS IS WE ACCEPT BAD PEOPLE WITH SO-CALLED "GOOD INTENTIONS."
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