Only in a movie would a woman with Kristen Bell’s looks need to inadvertently cast a spell to have men fall in love with her. Yet that’s what happens in When in Rome, a predictable but fitfully funny romantic comedy starring the blonde Bell and fellow fair-haired human Josh Duhamel.
Bell plays the all-work-no-play curator of a New York museum who meets Duhamel, a former pro-football player famous for being hit by lightning, at her sister’s wedding in the title city, where she plucks coins from the famed Fountain of Love and causes a band of men to aggressively woo her.
For me the slightly supernatural slant made the film a little more interesting, and the leads are at least likeable. They trade some amusing dialogue early on and prove decent physical comedians, she when desperately attempting to break a vase, he when smacking into trees and both when enduring an evening at restaurant with a sensory-deprivation theme.
The antics of said suitors provide most of the laughs here, though, especially those of Will Arnett’s Italian painter (whose tiny car figures in the film’s funniest scene) and Dax Shepard’s very vain fashion model. On the other end, Jon Heder’s moody street magician and Danny De Vito’s wealthy sausage king start off as just plain creepy before turning suitably endearing.
Don’t get me wrong. I still think it belongs on the Hallmark Channel, with its inevitable happy ending, TV-actor cast (including Don Johnson as Bell’s dad) and one-dimensional characters. At least it all finishes on a lively note, as cast members boogie to a peppy Paolo Nutini tune during the end credits with the kind of enthusiasm missing from the rest of the movie. – [DVD]
Comedy/Romance
Rated PG-13
DVD Release Date: 6/15/10