MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION Is Best Yet In Franchise

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION Review:

- The Mission Impossible movies have always been unique among modern action franchise films. There's nothing particularly memorable about their characters or plotlines, yet the franchise has consistently delivered solid - even great - action thrills via a series of talented directors and a star, in Tom Cruise, who is always absolutely driven to ensure that each MI film pushes the limits. Cruise - not his character Ethan Hunt - is the real star of Mission Impossible. He brings an intensity and physicality to these movies - even at age 50 - that few other modern-day action stars can approach. And in ROGUE NATION, Cruise is paired with a director who is similarly old-school in his approach to visceral action - Christopher McQuarrie. McQuarrie, both as a writer and director, has a knack for infusing movies with clockwork precision in story and action. In a franchise that's gone extreme via John Woo and over-the-top big via Brad Bird, McQuarrie brings things back down to earth - crafting a visceral film that makes sure that each action scene is tightly crafted and tells a story. In my mind, that makes ROGUE NATION the best in the series to date. While other MI movies tend to be entertaining but ultimately somewhat forgettable, ROGUE NATION'S cleverly choreographed action scenes have stuck with me over the last few weeks. This one was a great way to close out the summer blockbuster season - an old-school action movie that works on all levels.

The short version of ROGUE NATION's premise is that Cruise's Hunt is on the run and separated from his team. The Mission: Impossible unit has been disbanded by a government that finds it too much of a liability. But instead of coming home to roost, Hunt goes rogue - convinced that a top-secret organization called The Syndicate is pulling the strings from behind the scenes - taking out MI operatives and plotting various nefarious acts of global terror. Jeremy Renner's William Brandt - the MI government liason introduced in the last film - finds his hands tied by the government's blacklisting of the whole MI program, but he decides to help out Hunt in secret. As does Simon Pegg's ever-loyal tech expert Benji, and Ving Rhames' bruising weapons guru Luther. Hunt desperately tries to find the mysterious man behind the curtain of The Syndicate - the villainous Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), even as he runs afoul of femme fatale Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), who may be working for The Syndicate, may be a double agent, or may have her own mysterious agenda.

So, a couple things to talk about there. The first is that McQuarrie does great things with the MI team. After five movies, this is the first one where I realized that I really dug this combo of actors and characters. McQuarrie infuses all of the team members with jolts of personality. I mean, sure, Pegg has the comic chops and charisma to make Benji entertaining regardless. But here, Benji is more than just comic relief - we really get insight into his friendship with /hero worship of Hunt - and there's an added emotional layer to the character. There's lots of great banter - and genuine tension - between Cruise, Pegg, Renner, and Rhames. Throw in Alec Baldwin as a melodramatic government suit at odds with Renner, and you've got lots of great character dynamics to play with.

I also really enjoyed Sean Harris as the villain. He's like Mike Myers' Dieter as the leader of a global criminal conspiracy. And man, the final confrontation between him and Hun is just ingeniously staged. But more than that, the way the villains are introduced here is just Action Movie Making 101. McQuarrie gives each of Harris' henchmen just enough personality to make every fight and chase feel personal.

But the biggest story here is clearly Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust (great character name, by the way). Begin your fan-casting for her in the role of every kick-ass female franchise part now, because she is flipping fantastic in ROGUE NATION. As much as we've seen the which-side-is-she-really-on? femme fatale done before, Ferguson owns the part in a way that's rare and noteworthy. In the past, we've seen female leads in the MI-verse that couldn't quite match Cruise's intensity and presence. But here, Ferguson proves herself to be the real deal. It helps that the film's script ultimately does right by her character - giving her an arc that ultimately makes sense, and emotional and dramatic stakes that matter. But you've also got to give credit to the presence and badassery of the actress bringing this character to life. Suffice it to say, there's a brutal fight scene towards the film's end in which a lesser movie would have sidelined Ilsa. But in ROGUE NATION, Ilsa is not only right in the middle of the fray, but she is a complete ninja.

To talk a little more about Cruise, I think we're all getting to the point where - whacked-out Scientology baggage aside - we've got to acknowledge Cruise as a modern cinematic treasure. The level of commitment the guy brings to these roles - whether it be via participating in insane stunts, or just in general with the ferocity and physicality of his acting - is unmatched. Cruise is one of the few actors who I'm basically okay watching play a version of himself. Not to say he can't also do great character roles. But what I'm saying is: I can forgive Ethan Hunt being sort of a blank slate, because really, we're here to watch the Cruise show. And what's sort of - again - ingenious about ROGUE NATION is how fully aware it is of that on a meta / script level. The movie's main themes - about Hunt being turned on by the cruel system that birthed him, and wondering if he should just chuck it all and disappear - nicely parallel Cruise's own story. In any case, Cruise 100% brings his A-game to this one, and it makes a difference.

Now, Cruise and McQuarrie had a nice little action-sleeper recently with Jack Reacher. But their skill-sets really sync perfectly here. ROGUE NATION has several standout set-piece action scenes that are just masterfully composed. I'm thinking about a gorgeously shot fight scene that takes place backstage at an opera house, as Hunt tangles with a Syndicate heavy atop suspended platforms that rise and fall depending on how they are weighted. I'm thinking about a nail-biting underwater sequence in which Hunt has to hold his breath while trying to open a computerized lock, all while giant rotors rotate around him, forcing him to dodge for his life. I'm thinking of a high-speed motorcycle chase that has you holding on to dear life in your seat. What makes these action scenes work so well? For one thing, each is big, elaborate - and yet, each is grounded in physics and logic and "rules." It's amazing how effective an action scene can be when we understand the physics of what's happening in a given moment - that's how you make something visceral. For another thing, each one tells a story. We understand what the characters are after, it's clear what the goal is, and we understand the underlying stakes. Again, it's movie-making 101, but it feels like a lost-art in today's blockbuster world.

My only complain with the film is that, occasionally, the tone feels a little off. McQuarrie tends towards the pulpy - which is cool - but I think that the movie occasionally has some dialogue and character stuff that serves as unintentional comic relief because it's so grandiose. Alec Baldwin, in particular, goes a little too Jack Donaghy in some places.

ROGUE NATION feels like a throwback - not because there's anything dated about it, but simply because it feels practical, real, and beholden to real-world logic even at its most extreme. This is the rare action movie that has you hanging on every punch, every leap, every bullet's trajectory.  The best Mission: Impossible movie and one of the summer's best.

My Grade: A-

BLUE JASMINE Is Woody Allen at The Top of His Game

BLUE JASMINE Review:

- I've enjoyed Woody Allen's spate of recent films, but man, Blue Jasmine reminds us why Allen isn't just some eccentric uncle who makes amusingly nostalgic romps, but a still-vital filmmaker with real bite. Personally, I think Blue Jasmine is Allen's best film in years. It's very funny at times, but also has some real profundity, some real darkness, and some real, well ... "realness." Look, Woody Allen is a creative voice who's always had and always will have his eccentricities. But Blue Jasmine is his first film in ages that feels like it takes place not just in Woody's world, but in the here and now. It's saying something about the moment we live in - giving it a vitality that I think eluded even Woody's more well-received recent movies, like Midnight In Paris. At the same time, the movie is absolutely stacked with fantastic performances, including a leading-actress turn from Cate Blanchett that's likely the best of the year so far. This one caught me off-guard - it's not just one of the best Woody Allen films of the last decade, or two - but one heck of a movie in general.

BLUE JASMINE centers around Blanchett's Jasmine, a woman who, for a long time, lived a very calculated life of upper-crust privilege. I say calculated because Jasmine very deliberately went about molding herself into this high society woman - marrying a wealthy investor Hal (Alec Baldwin), firmly entrenching herself among the New York elites, and crafting an image of herself - from her clothes, to her way of speaking, to her name (Jasmine isn't the name she was born with) - that exudes upper class 1 percent-ism. The catch is that maintaining her perch atop high society meant being willfully ignorant of what was going on right in front of her eyes. Hal pampered and spoiled Jasmine, but he was also up to plenty of no-good. He was raking in money via a Ponzi-like scheme, scamming people into investments that didn't add up. Meanwhile, he was sleeping with seemingly every woman in sight, from his fitness instructor to Jasmine's friends. And Jasmine, terrified of losing it all, turns a blind eye. That is, until things reach a breaking point. Ultimately, Hal is exposed as a fraud and a cheat, goes to jail, and Jasmine loses everything. All of a sudden, her modern-day Blanche Dubois is forced to rely on the kindness of strangers.

Well, not strangers, exactly. While Jasmine was climbing the ladder of class and wealth in New York, her sister (not by blood - both were adopted), Ginger (Sally Hawkins), was busy living a humble blue-collar life. At first, she was married to the slovenly Augie (Andrew Dice Clay). But after his investment in Hal's Ponzi scheme went south, Augie parted ways with Ginger. Now, she's with Chili (Bobby Canavale), a slightly volatile grease-monkey cut from a similar cloth. The two live in San Francisco, where Ginger lives in a humble apartment with her two sons. And that's where Jasmine, penniless and aimless (though still sporting designer clothes and luggage) ends up - with nowhere else to go, and no one else to turn to except the sister who she long neglected.

When I called the film biting, I did so because it's both a takedown of upper-class privilege, but also a cautionary tale about settling for less when one probably deserves better. Basically, Allen sort of brilliantly looks at both upper and lower class lifestyles, and bravely points out that, in reality, neither is quite so great or admirable if built on a foundation of malaise and self-denial. Jasmine is, for a while, totally lost once she has to fend for herself and carve her own path. Ginger, meanwhile, staunchly defends her less glamorous, more carefree lifestyle - even as she falls in with men who are, in many ways, losers. Jasmine's taste in men isn't much better. She stayed with Hal for years despite his moral bankruptcy, and later, she latches on to Dwight (Peter Sarsgaard), a snobbish upper-cruster who sees Jasmine less as a fully-formed woman, and more as a would-be-wife who will help further his political aspirations.

None of this is black-and-white or cut-and-dried. As Jasmine and Ginger circle each other and analyze each other's lives, both have moments where they seem to speak truth, and both have moments where they seem hopelessly and even comically misguided. Even Jasmine's somewhat-valid criticisms of her sister are often undermined by Jasmine's instability - she's suffering a prolonged nervous breakdown, and has frequent moments of pill-popping hyper-anxiety. She talks to herself, carrying out extended conversations with no one in particular. She makes plans that don't quite make sense. And she is a habitual liar, unable to admit to others or to herself the truth about her life or who she was and is.

All of this is brought to life in a stunning performance from Cate Blanchett, who is just a whirlwind of raw emotion, just-barely-holding-it-together anxiety, and desperate determination to somehow course-correct and make things right. Blanchett's performance is amazing in that it veers effortlessly between comedy and tragedy. She picks her spots of when to let Jasmine's over-the-top obliviousness get played for laughs, and when to mine her mental anguish for genuine pathos. This is a big, over-the-top performance, but it's also riddled with nuance - little moments that make this just an incredibly fully-formed character, wholly inhabited by Blanchett. It's one of the singular performances in an already iconic career.

Sally Hawkins is also quite good, bringing city-girl spunk to Ginger and making her incredibly likable, if not tragically naive. But man, BLUE JASMINE is just filled with terrific supporting turns. One of the standouts has got to be Andrew Dice Clay as Auggie. I haven't seen Clay in many acting roles previously, but the guy pours his heart into this one. The notorious comedian seems to channel his real-life frustrations and world-weariness right into Augie, creating an incredibly authentic-feeling character. The trick that Clay pulls is that when we first meet Augie, he's a funny but off-putting schlub - a gruff, thickly-accented New Yawker who seems like bad news. But somehow, rough-and-tumble Clay becomes, in a strange way, the movie's moral conscious. He's the one guy in the movie who is content to just work hard and do what he can to make something of himself, without any shortcuts. It's telling that Augie and Ginger's ill-fated investment with Hal came about because they won some money in the lottery. One of the biggest morals of Blue Jasmine is to not trust that which comes without having been truly earned.

Louis CK also pops up in a really interesting supporting role, as a seemingly well-meaning nice-guy who tries to court Ginger. CK plays the part to perfection, and there are some great moments between him and Sally Hawkins. There's also a great role in the movie for one of my favorite actors, Michael Stuhlbarg, who plays a dentist who offers Jasmine a job as his receptionist. I won't spoil how their professional relationship plays out, but I will say that Stuhlbarg again shows his knack for awkward humor with this part. Meanwhile, Stuhlbarg's Boardwalk Empire cast-mate Bobby Cannavale (who was awesome on the show this past season), is also quite good here as another unstable alpha-male type. He's oddly still sporting his 1920's-style haircut from Boardwalk in the film, but I guess it sort of fits Chili's role as a sort of throwback man's-man type who likes beer, boxing, and hitting the town with his group of comically thuggish friends. Alec Baldwin is also excellent as Hal - he does sort of a less-comic version of 30 Rock's uber-confident Jack Donaghy - he plays Hal as a guy who seems to have it all figured out, but with hints that the cracks in his master plan are starting to show. My one question mark was honestly with Peter Sarsgaard. It might just be me, but I found his character to be almost cartoonishly snooty and annoying, even though the movie treats him pretty seriously, and Sarsgaard never really seems to act in a way that's at all comic or self-aware. He just felt to me less like a character I should be taking seriously, and more like a guy who should have been the villain in an 80's John Hughes teen movie, were he a few decades younger. I think there's a weird discrepancy here, where Sarsgaard has a John Malkovich-like over-the-topness about him - which makes him great for playing super-villains and whatnot, but less suited for more straightforward characters.

Sarsgaard's character is, luckily, one of the few traces in Blue Jasmine of the sort of weird Woody-isms that tend to pop up in Allen's latter-day films. Perhaps it's a symptom of getting older, but Allen's more recent films take place in modern times, but have a lot of weird anachronisms. It's like Allen flirts with trying to make things current, but then just says "to hell with it." And so we get Sarsgaard's straight-from-the-80's character, or a key plot point about how Jasmine needs to enroll in a computer class, just so she can enroll in an online course. Even though these are minor points in the grand scheme of things, I find it frustrating when everything else feels so timely and relevant, and clicks so well, and then these weird quirks come along and take you out of the movie a bit.

Semi-intrusive Woody-isms aside, BLUE JASMINE really is sort of a remarkable film in the Allen cannon. It's his 48th (!) film, but markedly different from anything he's done before - weaving expertly between comedy and drama, functioning as both smartly-observed social satire and heartrending character study. Woody tells this story with style and texture. He smartly uses flashbacks to show us key chapters from Jasmine's old life with Hal, and uses said flashbacks to emphasize her fractured state of mind in the present. Cate Blanchett, for her part, knocks it out of the park. And the movie is filled with applause-worthy performances, both from expected, always-reliable actors (Stuhlbarg, Louis CK, Baldwin), and unexpected surprises (Dice Clay). There's a fire here, an underbelly of emotion and intensity, that's totally gripping. At the same time, there are funny moments that show us the absurdity of these characters and the lives they've crafted for themselves. Sometimes, a new Woody Allen film comes out, and it serves as a nice reminder that the guy's still kicking, but not much more. This time, it's much more than that. This is a reminder that Woody was, and still, sometimes, is, one of the best filmmakers working today.

My Grade: A-

RISE OF THE GUARDIANS Is A Fun, Imaginative Adventure

RISE OF THE GUARDIANS Review:

- Imagine a pseudo-superhero team comprised of such make-believe children's icons as Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny (!), The Tooth Fairy, and The Sandman. Imagine that Santa is a badass brusier with "Naughty" and "Nice" tattooed on either arm, and that The Easter Bunny is an Aussie dude-with-a-'tude who wields a boomerang as a weapon. Those geeky enough to smile at this premise will get a kick out of RISE OF THE GUARDIANS, a new Dreamworks animated film that imagines childhood fantasy figures as earthly protectors who must guard the world's children from the likes of evil baddies like The Bogeyman. The thing is - even though the film might outwardly appear to make these beloved icons edgy or gritty, the movie is actually very sweet and whimsical. The visual style is actually very storybook-esque, rendered in gorgeously-animated CGI that looks amazing in 3D. So don't be fooled by the slightly comic bookish character designs - RISE OF THE GUARDIANS does have plenty of action and adventure, but at the end of the day it's a relatively simple, kid-friendly tale about belief and imagination.

The film's protagonist is Jack Frost - a supernatural entity who wields the power of ice, wind, and cold. The movie's mythology establishes that the world is filled with these super-powered wonders - each made into what they are by the mysterious Man in the Moon. These beings are invisible to the average person, but can be seen by kids if enough children believe in them. Jack Frost, sadly, is totally invisible - despite the fact that he loves nothing more than helping and having fun with kids (unbeknownst to the kids, him being invisible and all). He starts snowball fights, crafts cool ice-patterns ... he even causes Snow Days. But Jack's life takes on a new purpose when he is recruited to join The Guardians - an elite assemblage of mythical beings, dedicated to protecting the world's children from any threat of evil. As it turns out, Santa, The Easter Bunny, The Tooth Fairy, etc. need Jack to help do battle with the Bogeyman, aka Pitch Black. Pitch's scheme is to gain power by making kids believe in *him*. He'll do that by interrupting Easter, thwarting the Tooth Fairy and her army of sprites' nightly visits to kids, turning the Sandman's dreams into nightmares, etc. In Jack, Pitch sees a sort of kindred spirit - a fellow "invisible" who kids laugh off as imaginary.

When GUARDIANS gets overly talky and expository, it can drag a bit. And some of the dialogue is a bit overly-emo - the kind of stuff you might see in a Super Nintendo-era Japanese role playing game. But when the film relies on imagery to tell its story, it can be flat-out eye-melting. Some of the fantasy worlds shown here - Santa's workshop, the Tooth Fairy's fairy kingdom ... are rendered with the utmost detail and imagination and sense of wonder. Guillermo del Toro is listed as a producer on the film, and you can see his creative influence in how well-realized the various fantasy-lands are. Even when we only glimpse them briefly, they feel fully-formed and alive. The character design is a little garish in some cases (Santa, the Easter Bunny), but I actually really liked the look of the film overall - Jack, The Tooth Fairy, and the Sandman are all really cool-looking, as is Pitch. And there are lots of fun touches that make the characters feel unique - the choice to have the Sandman be mute, expressing his thoughts with sand-constructs, is pretty interesting and fun.

But Santa is still a highlight of the film, because Alec Baldwin voices him in such a fun manner - giving him a boisterous, Russian-accented voice that really sells the character and makes him likable. Same goes for Hugh Jackman as the Easter Bunny - he wins you over by selling the character 100%. Isla Fischer is chirpy and sweet as the fast-talking Tooth Fairy - and again, she makes what could have been a lame/cheesy character feel likable and interesting. As Pitch, Jude Law amps up the sinister-factor and does some classic badguy voicework. Finally, Chris Pine is very good as Jack Frost. I was actually surprised that it was Pine voicing him, as Jack is a far cry from the tough, confident characters that the actor is known for. While Jack has a lot of the movie's most cringe-worthy "oh woe is me, what is my meaning in life?" dialogue, Pine makes sure that Jack ultimately comes off as more empathetic than whiny.

Again, the visuals in the movie are often pretty awesome. Soaring flying scenes, spectacular fantasy landscapes, kinetic battle scenes, and artistic, evocative imagery make this one of the prettiest animated films I've seen in some time. There is a level of detail in the animation that's pretty remarkable, and I also found the action to be incredibly well-choreographed ... resulting in some fairly epic confrontations between good and evil.

I guess I will mention though ... that these sorts of movies always make me wonder, just a bit, about the message they are sending to kids. A major theme of the movie is that the kids' belief in the Guardians is what gives them power, with Pitch's evil plan revolving around discrediting the Guardians so that the kids no longer believe. Now, I am all for kids having imagination and wonder in their lives. But I always get prickly when a movie preaches that *all* kids should, of course, believe Christian symbols like Santa and The Easter Bunny - and for them to not believe represents a worrisome loss of childhood innocence. Anyways, it's just a pet peeve when movies present Christianity as a universal mono-religion when we all know it isn't (and tellingly, the scenes that show Santa hopping around the globe show him specifically in countries like England - we never see the Guardians in, say, India).

All that aside, I really liked RISE OF THE GUARDIANS. It's a fun, visually-breathtaking film that takes mixes child-like whimsy with a slight comic-bookish edge to craft a really cool, imaginative story. I was super-impressed by the amount of world-building and care that clearly went into this one, and found myself surprised at how won over I was by the characters. This is a film that is up there with some of the best animated films of 2012.

My Grade: B+

TO ROME WITH LOVE: Woody Allen's Euro-Odyssey Continues

TO ROME WITH LOVE Review:

- Even if I don't love all of his work, I'll always be interested to see a new Woody Allen film. Woody's movies are so distinctly ... Woody ... that it's fun to just get inside the guy's head for a little bit and see what's on his mind these days. His movies, to me, are always fascinating to watch even when they don't 100% click - because there, on-screen, you're seeing the gears of his brain turning, seeing him work out his ever-expanding neuroses for all to see. Now, I tend to think that the chasm between the "great" Woody Allen films and the "dud" Woody Allen films is not necessarilly that great. It's why I tend to be surprised when, by turns, critics and fans hail something like Midnight in Paris as a crowning achievement, while writing off something like Anything Else as a bomb. Most of Woody's films have their moments. Most have some pointed observations, some interesting philisophical themes. But most also have implausibilities, anachronisms, awkwardness - characters that seem to exist only in a weird Woodyland where people on the street stop and discuss poetry and philosophy in casual conversation. Especially as Woody's gotten older, there's increasingly a huge disconnect between his percieved worldview and how things actually are. He usually writes characters and stories that are supposed to be grounded in reality (unlike, say, a Wes Anderson who is clearly writing from a left-of-center perspective). But again, Woody's reality sometimes feels like that of a guy who needs to get out more and live in the actual real world. And yet ... like I said, there's something to be said for a guy who is this singular of a voice. Sometimes, it's nice to imagine living in Woody's world, where nerds win the hearts of brilliant beauties, where knowledge of literature and the arts is used as romantic currency, where everyone is is smart, worldly, and well-off enough to spend their time dealing with the existential rather than the real.

Which brings me to TO ROME WITH LOVE. In many ways, I enjoyed it about as much as Midnight In Paris. For one thing, the setting is spectacular - if nothing else, the film serves as a great little travelogue. Allen still has a great eye for location, and he has an uncanny ability to film a given city and make it look both authentic and exotic and otherworldly. Allen's also got a talent for capturing the personalities of his cast members, and the cast of this film is truly top-notch. Alec Baldwin, Jesse Eisenberg, Greta Gerwig, Ellen Page, Penelope Cruz, Roberto Benigni, Alison Pill, Judy Davis, and Fabio Armiliato (a real-life opera singer who's hilarious playing one here) - all are great in the film. Even Woody himself gets in on the action, playing Alison Pill's father in a very amusing role - his first on-camera part in several years.

The film's story is actually four stories. Four interweaving but wholly separate stories that each tell a comedic tale set in Rome. In one story, Eisenberg plays an architecture student studying in Rome and living with his girlfriend, played by Gerwig. Her friend - a lovable but clearly crazy aspiring actress (Page) comes to visit for a few weeks, and immediately, Eisenberg is tempted by her freewheeling ways. The twist/joke here is that, one day, Eisenberg runs into an older, well-known architect played by Baldwin. the two strike up a conversation and become friendly, and Baldwin begins following his young apprentice around, giving him advice and providing a running commentary on the younger man's romantic dillemnas. Is Baldwin actually an older version of Eisenberg, magically transported back to the past to lend a hand to his younger self at a moment when he's about to - potentially - make a life-changing mistake? The movie plays coy, but it's the kind of magical-realism-infused device that Woody loves. In the second story, an ordinary man in Rome (Benigni) wakes up one day to find - suddenly and inexplicably - that he is the most famous man in Rome. He's a star, a tabloid sensation, a celebrity. But why? This, also, is Woody having fun with magical-realism. In the third bit, a young couple travels to Rome together - while happy on the surface, each longs for something a bit more adventurous from life. When they separate for the day, each finds temptation - the guy from a gorgeous prostitute (Cruz) who mistakes him for her client, the gal from a famous actor who takes a liking to her. In the final story, Woody and his wife (Davis) travel to Rome to visit their daighter and her new fiance. When they meet the fiance's family, Woody has a "eureka!" moment when he hears his in-law-to-be singing in the shower (Armiliato). It so happens that Woody's character is a retired opera director, and he sees this man - who's never sang professionally - as his ticket back to the bigtime. Only problem is, the dude can only sing well while in the shower. And so, yeah, shenanigans ensue from there.

All four stories are pretty amusing, though the one that worked for me the most was probably the Benigni segment, as it was a rare instance where Woody seems to strike at some spot-on social satire, with regards to our current Reality TV/TMZ culture. Benigni plays the whole thing brilliantly, and is very funny. This is also the segment of the movie where Woody's script is just in full-on farce mode, and it works well. It's nice to see him do something so blatantly silly and comedic. Of course, the opera-singer story is also very funny at times, but it's also much more dragged-out feeling as it's sort of a one-note joke. That said, I'll say again that Armiliato is hilarious, and also, Allen gets in a few choice quips - some vintage Woody sprinkled in there. The young couple storyline is okay, but meanders and feels a bit miscast. The actor who seduces the young woman is supposed to be a suave George Clooney type, but doesn't really pull it off. Cruz is good though, and looks stunning. The Eisenberg/Gerwig/Page/Baldwin storyline is the one with the most potential, but also the one that felt the most off to me. You've got two of the most perfect possible Woody surrogates in Eisenberg and Page, but the dialogue they're given feels like Woody at his worst - pretentious and stilted. I mean come on Woody, stop having your characters use the term "make love" in every other sentance. And why is Jesse Eisenberg dressed like an 80-year-old man? I know, some of these things are surface details, but still ... there's just a lot that felt *off* about this segment in particular. It's a feeling you get a lot when seeing Woody trying to do slice-of-life stuff these days. Maybe the segment could have worked better if it was the subject of an entire film - certainly, there's enough potential here to make a whole movie around this group of characters. But the anthology aspect of the movie - while helping the simpler, sillier segments of the movie - harms this more serious, more thematically ambitious portion.

If there's one overarching theme of the movie, I suppose it'd be that of people not being content with what they have, then coming to realize that, perhaps, things aren't quite as bad as they'd seemed. "It could always be worse." But that theme only very loosely ties things together. And the Rome setting gives the film visual continuity, but not necessarilly narrative continuity. The upside is that To Rome With Love is easy and breezy - it's pretty much enjoyable from start to finish, even if you end up wincing at some of the dialogue and characterization choices. Some critics may look for the broader critical analysis in all this ... is this "good Woody" or "bad Woody?" Is this the end of Woody's recent "streak," or a sign that his European film tour is losing steam? Is this a letdown after Midnight in Paris, or a solid companion piece. The answer is all and none. This is a "lite" movie from Allen, sure, but it's also a quintisenntially Woody Allen movie, with a lot of the strengths and flaws that you so often find in his work. But the man is now a novelty, because there are so few singular voices making movies. Especially in the summertime, when so many movies are processed, synthetic, product - it's fun and refreshing to see what now amounts to the cinematic equivalent of your neurotic comedian uncle sitting you down and telling you a couple of funny stories.

My Grade: B