When in Rome

(2010)

91 min. Walt Disney Studios Distribution. Director: Mark Steven Johnson. Cast: Kristen Bell, Josh Duhamel, Anjelica Huston, Danny DeVito, Will Arnett.

/content/films/3685/1.jpg Ah, Roma. The Eternal City. 2500 years of history. Home of the Colosseum, the Sistine Chapel, and the Trevi Fountain. And now When in Rome, otherwise known as “The Eternal Movie.” Yes, Touchstone Pictures fiddles while Rome burns again, this time as part of the most dismal romantic comedy to come up the Via Appia since Plautus penned “Sex Actually.” (Okay, I’m making that last part up.)

Come, play the cliché-counting game with me! When in Rome stars Kristen Bell (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) as Beth, an ambitious, workaholic New Yorker who’s unlucky in love (her last boyfriend broke up with her in Applebee’s). When she zips to Rome for her sister’s wedding, she reaches new lows of embarrassment, particularly the trailer-ready scene in which she’s supposed to break a vase for good luck, but instead lays waste to the reception hall (Oh, Lucy!).

But destiny isn’t done with Beth. At that very same wedding is Nick (Josh Duhamel of Transformers), the conspicuously hunky best man. Their boozy flirtation takes a bad turn, leaving a distraught Beth soaking in the “Fontana D’Amore.” There, she purloins four of the coins wishful lovers have tossed, setting in motion a painfully unfunny comedy of stalking. You see, by plucking out the coins, she has magically made herself the object of the wishers’ love mania. They follow her back to New York to make her--and us--miserable.

So Beth suddenly has more men than she knows what to do with, giving her something in common with the screenwriters (the geniuses behind Old Dogs). There’s street painter Antonio (Will Arnett), male model Gale (Dax Shepard), amateur magician Lance (Jon Heder), and “Sausage King” Al (Danny DeVito), each a hideous, walking stereotype. Arnett fruitlessly chases a Roberto Benigni impression (“Principessa!”). DeVito wastes time playing his umpteenth peppy loser (“Encased meat is my life’s work”). But director Mark Steven Johnson seems truly desperate with Shepard and Heder, the former made to rip off his shirt to show off his physique and the latter reunited with his Napoleon Dynamite co-star Efren Ramirez for some mind-numbing antics.

Everything about When in Rome is obvious and hackneyed; the music and even the sound effects are garish. Those in sore need of a break from reality, any break, may enjoy a movie that asks you to believe Duhamel was the victim of a lightning strike that left him without peripheral vision, or that there’s a trendy restaurant called Blackout that hands out night-vision goggles. But Johnson is no Blake Edwards. He’s more like a party clown who’s bombing…hard. Which may explain the scene that attempts to milk comedy from a ride in a tiny car. Oh, the humanity.

You can wait around for the moment when Beth tells one of the men in her life (guess which), “I want to thank you for making me believe in love again.” Or I have a better idea: can I interest you in a nice nap?