Take Beth (Kristen Bell), for example. Her responsibilities as gallery curator for Manhattan's famed Guggenheim Museum already cost her one boyfriend who couldn't wait for her busy schedule to clear. In fact, the petite beauty is so overbooked, she can barely spare 36 hours to jet to Milan for her kid sister's (Alexis Dziena) hasty nuptials to a handsome Italian.
As it turns out, that's all the time Beth needs to create a major headache. Convinced by her father (a dapper Don Johnson) to take a chance on romance, Beth flirts -- and strikes out -- with best man Nick (Josh Duhamel). Venting her frustrations, she plunges into a nearby fountain and starts retrieving coins from the well's bottom, swearing --- not unlike Corey Feldman in Goonies -- to take back all of love's unfulfilled promises. Unfortunately for Beth, the hopeless romantics who threw the coins into the fountain magically fall under her spell and follow her back home to New York City.
Speaking of 'spells,' When In Rome is one of those romantic comedies that's compelled to spell everything out for its audience at 10 minute intervals, as if we were deciphering an ancient symbolon at the heart of the latest Dan Brown novel. This isn't rocket science, it's comedy -- and a pretty loose one at that.
Bell, who is a gifted physical comedian, acts as the harried hub around which some funny suitors fly, each dropping nonsensical but randomly amusing bits into the mix. Duhamel is dashing as Beth's eventual love interest, but the actor actually has better chemistry with Saturday Night Live player Bobby Moynihan, who's very funny as Nick's best friend. Will Arnett and Dax Shepard, meanwhile, score the deepest laughs as an amateur painter and a vainglorious model, respectively. Shepard's prone to whipping off his shirt and hurling sharp compliments at his mirrored image. Danny DeVito thankfully leaves his shirt on, but struggles to connect with Bell in the few scenes he's given. And Rome almost senses that Jon Heder has little to contribute beyond his character's magic tricks, so they fall back on a Napoleon Dynamite reunion that tickled our test-screening audience.
Taking a cue from his active starlet, director Mark Steven Johnson makes sure Rome moves along at a fly-by pace. Johnson's best known for the action-packed comic book adaptations of Daredevil and Ghost Rider, so it's understandable that Rome occasionally relies on broad physical comedy. The results are uneven: A dinner date in a blacked-out restaurant is inspired, but Heder crashing through a glass table at the end of a failed magic trick is not. Rome never lingers long enough to dwell on its rough patches, nor does it pause to appreciate a well-timed comedic line. Essentially, it cuts its corners as it races to its predetermined conclusion, when we might have appreciated a little breathing room.
