Directed by Mark Steven Johnson
(PG-13)
*
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A Manhattan career girl resorts to a magical fountain to find love.
When in Rome “tries hard to be a modern-day fairy tale,” but ends up an old-fashioned flop, said Connie Ogle in The Miami Herald. In this “dismal” romantic comedy, Kristen Bell is a chronically single career woman who flies to Rome for her sister’s wedding. Hoping to find Mr. Right, she fishes coins from a reputed fountain of love—only to be hunted down by their former owners, a bunch of Mr. Wrongs. The filmmakers obviously thought they had a charmer with this “pixie-dusted idea,” said A.O. Scott in The New York Times. Instead, the “fountain of love hocus-pocus messes up the tone,” and the cast of competing men seem more like creepy stalkers than unworthy suitors. The actors who play these crazies are good ones—Danny DeVito, Will Arnett, and Jon Heder—so blame director Mark Steven Johnson for wasting their talents and our time. Even by the “extremely low standards” of the romantic-comedy genre, this film “plumbs new depths,” said Lou Lumenick in the New York Post. Though 2010 is hardly underway, When in Rome could easily be the “worst movie of the year.”
