A stinker

I confess: I enjoyed some of this the firs time I saw it. After a second look, I have to say that in a lot of ways, this is one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time. The acting, with a few exceptions, is awful. I'm no fan of Alec Baldwin but even he looked good compared with the people around him. Everyone seemed to have acquired this stuttering style of uber-intense line delivery that was boring the first time (Jesse Eisenberg, I'm looking at you). All the meet and greet scenes were so stagey it made my skin crawl watching them. Was I really supposed to believe these people had never met? All the typical Romans live in the most expensive real estate in Italy. Is this supposed to be convincing? Or is it just another Hollywood cliche? Yeah, it's a cliche because Hollywood's typical audiences can't deal with normal people who don't live in luxury or they get written off as losers.

It's kind of like Woody Allen decided to use all the worst elements of one of those really bad 1960s Italian comedies, throw in some OTT sets and some appalling acting in the belief that he could make a good film out of it. His direction on this was a real low point. Even the editing wasn't good.

The upsides - and there are precious few - I thought Milly's adventure was okay but it was mildly amusing rather than good. Penelope Cruz was actually quite funny for the brief time she was on screen and yes, the eternal city looked great but got milked too hard for cute factor.

If you like Allen's city movies (the European ones), "Vicky, Christina, Barcelona" is much better than this and "Midnight in Paris" is worth watching". This tries to cash in on the success of both those movies without any of the good points.