To Rome with Love ** (2012, Woody Allen, Alec Baldwin, Roberto Benigni, Penélope Cruz, Judy Davis, Jesse Eisenberg, Greta Gerwig, Elliot Page, Alison Pill, Flavio Parenti) – Classic Movie Review 13,945

Woody Allen’s 2012 comedy film To Rome with Love tells four tales set and filmed in the Italian capital.

Writer/ director Woody Allen’s 2012 comedy film To Rome with Love tells four tales set and filmed in the Italian capital. The mood is light-hearted, carefree, quite silly really. The film means well, but where are the hilarious jokes to back up its stories? Rome seems to have blunted Woody Allen’s normally sharp wit.

While vacationing in Rome, middle-aged American architect John (Alec Baldwin) takes a trip back to the street he lived on as a student and encounters a young American man whose romantic woes remind him of a painful incident from his own youth. Retired American opera director Jerry (Woody Allen) meets his soon to be in-law Giancarlo Santoli (Italian operatic tenor Fabio Armiliato), an Italian funeral director with an amazing voice while he showers, and decides to direct the reluctant public singer on stage. Jerry is married to Phyllis (Judy Davis) and their daughter Hayley (Alison Pill) is getting married to Michelangelo (Flavio Parenti), A middle-aged Italian clerk (Roberto Benigni) mysteriously wakes up to find himself a famous celebrity. Antonio and Milly (Alessandro Tiberi, Alessandra Mastronardi) are a young Italian couple on their honeymoon. Milly meets an actor (Antonio Albanese), whom she idolises, while Antonio meets a resourceful prostitute (Penélope Cruz).

The silly, farcical 2012 film To Rome with Love is a low-on-wit, mostly rather dismal ‘comedy’, overall quite shockingly lame. It must be Woody’s weakest film, full of poor, feeble gags, clumsy situations, botched performances, and, worst of all, an American tourist’s view of Rome. Woody fills it with postcard pictures, naive ideas and Italian stereotypes. The elaborate ‘Volare’ finale should be a show-stopper, but Woody fumbles it.

Roberto Benigni’s performance as the nonentity tuned celebrity must be the film’s worst, over-played to a shocking level, but his ‘story’ is so ridiculous that the Oscar-winning actor didn’t have a chance. He is totally unfunny, quite awful, and his one-gag role is hammered relentlessly into the ground. Woody’s own character of the arrogant and cowardly American opera director is so unsympathetic that it would be impossible to make him amusing, especially with the lame and pathetic lines he has. It entirely defeats the great comedian. His is the film’s second worst performance. However, Judy Davis is very good as his canny, long-suffering wife, and Alec Baldwin and Jesse Eisenberg are good too, all three quite nice company, not trying to be funny, just quietly amusing, and succeeding. Isn’t Penélope Cruz Spanish? The game and lovely actress carries on regardless, speaking Italian too, quite charmingly, as the stereotype prostitute, the kind Sophia Loren once played in the movies (is this what Woody is thinking of?).

Greta Gerwig and Elliot Page are also stuck with unsympathetic characters as Eisenberg’s girlfriend and her best friend. Page and Eisenberg end up having an affair. Elliot Page’s shallow actress character dumps Jesse Eisenberg like a ton of bricks when a Hollywood blockbuster film work opportunity arises abroad (what is Woody thinking of here?).

Sorry to say, Woody should stay home in Manhattan. The Italians should sue for defamation.

Runtime: 111 minutes.

It was released in Italy on April 13, 2012 and in the US on June 22, 2012.

It was a hit, earning $16.7 million in the US and $73.2 million worldwide, against a budget of $17 million.

The four separate stories deal with the theme of ‘fame and accomplishment’, though Allen says he did not intend for them to have any thematic connection. Antonio’s story is an homage to the Federico Fellini film The White Sheik (1952), borrowing many of its elements.

© Derek Winnert 2026 – Classic Movie Review 13,945

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