To Rome with Love

I thoroughly enjoyed 75% of this film; the other 25%, no and that's a shame.
Woody Allen is an interesting man (and completely bizarre) and makes crazy and bizarre films, some better than others. Last year's Midnight in Paris was delightful and easily one of his best films; this one fell quite short of it.
The main problem (other than the typical everyone is playing Woody Allen) is that there were simply too many plots, four in all.
The plots I enjoyed: The film begins with a young tourist, Hayley (an underused Alison Pill) needs help finding a location and she falls in love with the Italian guy who helps her find her way, Michelangelo (Flavio Parenti) and soon they become engaged. Then her parents, Jerry and Phyllis (Woody Allen, playing himself and Judy Davis, a therapist) meet his parents, Giancarlo (Fabio Armiliato) and Maria. Jerry, a retired musician, discovers that Giancarlo has an amazing voice, but only in the shower. Outside of the shower, his voice falters. Jerry doesn't like retirement (he associates it with death, as his wife explains it) so he decides that Giancarlo will become famous, even though neither he or nor his family wants it. But Woody Allen must have his way, so Giancarlo becomes famous; he sings a famous opera in his shower, on the stage, with all the other actors in period customers. The show is a hit, with the audience if not with critics. However, Giancarlo opts not to travel outside of his native Italy, but Jerry can live with that. Then there is Leopaldo (the Oscar-winning Roberto Benigni), an average man with an average looking wife, kids and job. He feels as though his opinions don't matter and unfortunately, they don't, at least in the whole scheme of things. But then he wakes up one morning and is famous, huge, the next big thing. Just for being normal. Celebrities love him; women sleep with him; other people want his autograph; reporters bombard him with questions, from how he likes his haircut to whether he wears boxers or briefs. Though this plot is relatively simple, it works and works well. It is like a satire on why some celebrities in the US are famous at all (hello, Kardashians). In the end, Leopaldo loses his appeal with the public and they cling to someone new. At first, Leopaldo is happy that his life can go back to normal; he can actually get some peace and quiet but he also misses the perks of being famous and the fact that his opinion doesn't matter anymore. The last plot I enjoyed involved the young newlywed Italian couple, Antonio and Milly (Alessandro Tiberi and Alessandra Mastronardi) who arrive at a hotel to meet Antonio's aunts and uncles with the hope of a job offer for him. Desperate to impress them, Milly decides to get her hair done, but gets lost along with way to finding a salon. Needless to say, she has an interesting day. She runs into a movie set and gets to eat lunch with her hero, Luca Salto, who also happens to be separated from his wife. They go to a hotel and, after some debate with herself, she decides to have sex with him, but before she can do so, a burglar arrives and tries to rob them, and then the hotel manager knocks on the door, for his wife wants to catch him with another woman, but instead the burglar jumps into bed with Milly while Luca hides in the bathroom. Milly sleeps with him instead. Meanwhile, Antonio receives a surprise of his own. A prostitute arrives in his room. Her name is Anna (Penelope Cruz, who can speak flawless Italian). It is a mistake, but then all of Antonio's relatives arrive, so Anna pretends to be Milly for the rest of the day, which is interesting considering she is wearing a small, form fitting dress. Eventually, she gets Antonio to open up and they have sex, because, after all, it is already paid for. Apparently, Antonio was a virgin on his wedding night, though his wife was not.
Now to the plot I didn't like: Alec Baldwin is John an architect vacationing in Italy. He runs into Jack (Jesse Eisenberg) a student of architecture. However, the rest of his plot involves Baldwin as the thought reader of the characters. Jack is dating a fellow student, Sally (Greta Gerwig), a sweet, but boring person. Baldwin says as much. Then enters her friend and out-of-work actress Monica (Ellen Page) who is interesting. She pretends to know everything and she fakes it well. Soon, Jack is under her spell, even though he hooks her up with his Italian friend, but they end up together anyway, just as I fully expected them to. They both know that it's wrong, but that doesn't stop them. Though Jack decides that he will break the news to Sally and then he and Monica can be together, she gets a job offer which will take her away from Italy for five months and Jack knows that she will be out of his life forever and he'll be stuck with Sally forever. This plot was not good, as Sally was just an object, without any real purpose and the use of Baldwin as a narrator and conscience of the actors was extremely annoying, and I was happy when Eisenberg yelled at him, "Can't I get a scene alone with her?" meaning Monica. I was wondering the same thing. Though Page did well with her role and had good chemistry with Eisenberg, I felt that anyone could have played his part and the same certainly goes for Gerwig, whom I normally like but her talents were wasted in this film.
However, luckily the other plots saved the film from being awful. Too bad all the plots weren't good. Still, the film deserves a second viewing and was far from a waste of my time for there were some genuinely funny scenes scattered throughout. Grade: B