TO ROME WITH LOVE

TO ROME WITH LOVE
Written and Directed by Woody Allen
Starring Alec Baldwin, Jesse Eisenberg, Ellen Page, Penelope Cruz and Woody Allen


Jack: What’s so great about suffering?
Monica: There’s just something attractive about a man who is plagued by the perils of existence.

Woody Allen remains true to form with his latest international comedy TO ROME WITH LOVE. And by that I mean that he has followed up a genuine hit with a complete misfire. This is Allen’s pattern after all. On occasion, he gets it just right and many people thought he did just that with last year’s MIDNIGHT IN PARIS. The Oscar winner for Original Screenplay is not my favourite Allen film by any means, but it did certainly enchant with its whimsical look at Paris and people from a cross-generational perspective. His latest hopes to achieve that same success in Rome, but it is such a disconnected collage of familiar Allen talking points that I don’t see the masses swooning this time around. And sadly, if history continues to repeat itself, we will be in store for a few more Allen misses before another hit.

I’m not really sure where to begin with TO ROME WITH LOVE. Alec Baldwin plays an architect vacationing in his former stomping grounds and Jesse Eisenberg is, what I interpret as, a younger version of himself. Baldwin revisits his past by observing Eisenberg (the character Allen himself said he would have liked to play, y’know, if he was fifty years younger) as he waffles between passion (Ellen Page) and stability (Greta Gerwig). Alison Pill referees between her new fiancé, Michelangelo (Flavio Parenti), and her parents (Judy Davis and Allen, making his first film appearance since SCOOP, another real winner), as Allen tries to make Antonio’s father (famed tenor, Fabio Armiliato) into a famous opera singer by staging him in shows where he sings in a shower. Meanwhile, Penelope Cruz plays a prostitute who is mistaken for the new wife of a young businessman (Alessandro Tiberi). They parade around the city with his family while his actual wife (Alessandra Mastronardi) remains perpetually lost in Rome. And then, as if the rest of it wasn’t absurd enough, Roberto Benigni plays a nobody who suddenly and inexplicably becomes an overnight sensation, his every move, from breakfast to bedtime, becomes public fascination. As individual parts, they are more or less amusing and occasionally very witty, but as a whole, they never cohesively come together to mean anything substantial.

TO ROME WITH LOVE was originally called, “Nero Fiddled”. The name change itself exposes what I believe to be the only major selling point about this movie. Clearly, the hope was that those who fell in love with Allen in Paris would do the same in Rome, which is, of course, just as picturesque. The reality is that there will certainly be more interest in this film as a result, but once those patrons get there, I doubt very much they will feel the warmth and charm they are expecting. Before long, everyone who celebrated Allen last year after years of denouncing him as over, will probably find themselves wondering if his late in life romp through Paris, was just a fluke.

REVIEW: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (B-)

(dir. Rob Marshall, 2011)

Full disclosure: this franchise is something which, despite poor quality and confusing narratives, I cannot hate.  No matter whether or not a Pirates film is good, I manage it thoroughly enjoy it.  It's the hold the franchise has over me.  Color me a biased film critic, matey.  (Also, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl in all it's by-the-book and Disneyfied glory, is my favorite film of all time.  Right around The Silence of the Lambs, Pulp Fiction, White Christmas, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind).

But this film, the fourth in an admittedly bloated series, was attempting to recapture the start-up magic of the original.  It was without the second and third films' penchant for elaborate, complicated plots and subplots.  But it never fully recaptured the feeling of the original.  What was so grand about the first three was their undeniable epic scope; you felt like you were watching something that was a true adventure flick.  But On Stranger Tides doesn't have that feeling.  It's deflated.

This time around, Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp prancing around in the role that made him a star) is left yet again without a ship trying to locate the infamous Fountain of Youth.  Along his way he meets villain turned ally turned privateer Hector Barbossa (a perfectly hammy Geoffrey Rush), an erstwhile paramour (Penelope Cruz), and the mysterious Blackbeard (Ian McShane doing what he can to save the role from disaster).  Oh, and there's a replacement for Orlando Bloom's Will Turner in their somewhere and a mermaid.  But best not to bother ourselves with talking about them in depth, the filmmakers certainly didn't.



McShane, as I said, is doing what he can to save the part.  Blackbeard is easily the worst villain of the franchise, and simply because he's written so poorly.  A bad guy going out to seek the Fountain of Youth so he doesn't die?  Is that it?  Is that suppose to make him a bad guy?  He doesn't try to kill Jack, Barbossa, or anyone we like.  His majestically powers of battleship embottlement, zombification, and rope manipulation are never explained nor do we ever get a good glimpse of what make Blackbeard so vile.  At least with Davy Jones and Barbossa we understood their means to an end, even if their means were vicious.  The Pirates series never had a villain you could really hate; Barbossa just wanted to taste an apple and Jones was just a sad, heartbroken man.  But with Blackbeard, you're just told he's a bad man and you're left at that.

Reporting to duty, I was told I have to save this film?

I know the legion of stalwart Pirates fans voiced their criticism over the third installment (and even the second one), and how Disney didn't either hear or chose not to address those concerns is perplexing.  Perhaps their notion of going back to the original was eliminating overly excessive battle sequences and frothy plots, but I'd be hard to find anyone who doesn't cite the maelstrom scene from At World's End as that film's highlight.  Or the Kraken attacks from Dead Man's Chest, or that delicious final sword fight between Jack and Barbossa in The Curse of the Black Pearl.  In this film, there is not defining scene, no moment of pure excitement.  The climax seems merely little less than an afterthought and in many ways a foregone conclusion.

The true highlight of the film wasn't a battle, or a scene full of visual effects wonderment, but rather the brief scenes between Jack and Barbossa.  Johnny Depp and Rush have always such a marvelous chemistry, and I always felt their lack of togetherness in the second film stopped it from being great (granted, Barbossa was dead in that film...mostly).  It doesn't hurt that the writers gave Barbossa the only intriguing motive to do anything in the whole film, what with trying to enact revenge on the man who cost him his leg (and when Rush tells his tale vengeance, it's a scene of splendid acting).  When they're together, how they play off one another is just a type of magic you can't create with CGI.  If the fifth film wants to do better with everyone (audiences and critics), I think re-pairing that dynamic duo would be a wise decision.

A poor man's Will and Elizabeth

But this fourth installment just doesn't have the charm of the first three.  There no fun banter between straight man Will Turner and crazy man Sparrow.  No Pintel and Ragetti.  No Governor Swan or Norrington.  No fun villain that you secretly root for.  It feels too small, and there's not one standout performance.  Bother Depp and Rush are great, but a far cry from their work on the earlier films and not for lack of trying or prowess, but rather because the parts and the direction gave them little to work with.  It seems director Rob Marshall's career has been in a bit of a nosedive since he nearly won an Oscar in 2002,  as he's followed the best Picture-winning Chicago with Memoirs of a Geisha, Nine, and now this.  From the man that gave us "Cell Block Tango," I was expecting more grandeur, and instead I got a stifled, under-realized film.  The series needs Gore Verbinksi back and pronto.

But still, just being able to see Rush and Depp on screen again in these parts was a large portion of my enjoyment.  And I cannot argue with the genuine joy I get from seeing Capt. Jack.  That enough is enough to see the film.  I just wish there were more reasons.  GRADE: B-








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PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES

Written by Ted Eliott and Terry Rossio

Directed by Rob Marshall

Starring Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz, Geoffrey Rush and Ian McShane

Barbosa: You haven't changed.

Jack Sparrow: Implying the need.

It’s fitting really that the fourth installment in Disney’s PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN series, ON STRANGER TIDES, finds everyone’s favourite captain, Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) searching frantically for the fountain of youth. The franchise itself has not exuded any true vigor since the first time it sent sail and, now serving under the new direction of Rob Marshall (CHICAGO), it simply drifts aimlessly at sea while trying to recapture its former glory. Drastic changes were made to the format, most notably a major cast overhaul, to rejuvenate it and allow it to stand alone as a one-off story in hopes of keeping Disney’s treasure chest plentiful. The only strange thing about these tides though is that anyone is still watching and waiting for them to come in.

Some of the aforementioned drastic changes include the shedding of previous series regulars, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly, to make room for fresh blood, Penelope Cruz and Ian McShane. Also gone are the overly complicated plot lines incorporated into the second and third installments to justify their existence. All they managed to do was infuriate audiences and suck all the fun out of the franchise anyway so that’s no loss. Instead, this adventure is meant to exist unto itself and it most certainly does this. It just doesn’t bother having any fun in the process. Depp returns as the character he has brought nothing new to for years now and he joins a bunch of other pirates, including Cruz, whom he had some sort of sordid affair with way back when, as they search for the location of the fountain of youth. Aside from an encounter with some of the most vicious mermaids I’ve ever seen, this amounts to little more than a lot of walking and talking in the jungle.

The truth is there is nothing strange about these tides really and this is why the film doesn’t work. A new director and a new approach were supposed to thrust some fresh gusts of wind into the aging franchise’s sails but all it truly manages is to raise this sunken ship to the surface again and leave it there to rock monotonously back and forth, in unnecessary 3D no less. (This by no means applies to McShane, who is the only point of interest past those scary mermaids.) Considering previous pirate complaints centered around how confusing it all got, I am surprised that Marshall leaves us with more confusion this time around too – more specifically, why is this series still going? Oh right, treasure.