To Rome With Love (R) ★★★

With To Rome with Love, Woody Allen puts another stamp in his filmmaking passport in a gorgeously shot homage to the art, architecture, and people of the historic city. Unfortunately, the film's four story lines are not created equal; jam-packing the movie with so many characters leaves them all just a little underdeveloped. The most interesting is a blossoming love affair between Jack (Jesse Eisenberg) and his girlfriend's best friend Monica (Ellen Page). While his girlfriend Sally (Greta Gerwig) is given short shrift in this scenario, the most entertaining part is the ongoing dialogue between Jack and John (Alec Baldwin), an architect who remains delightfully mysterious. Is he simply revisiting his past and advising a young man amid a position in which he himself once found himself, or is it more literal? It's hard to say, but his brusque advice — "Go ahead, walk into the propeller" — is always as entertaining as it's true.

To Rome with LoveAs far as the other plot threads go, we have the inevitable culture clash between American and Italian future in-laws; Leopoldo (Roberto Benigni), a dorky normal guy who finds himself at the eye of an inexplicable media hurricane; and a newly married couple that get separated in the big city and end up learning all sorts of sexy lessons about themselves. Allen also wedges Penélope Cruz in as a prostitute who schools the young married man on the reality of the culture around him (turns out her clientele are just as, if not more, powerful than his uptight relatives, who will determine the boy's professional future) . She's also there to wear a tight dress (Woody's yen for including random sex workers in his movies is well documented, but remains baffling).

None of these characters is given enough screen time to be fleshed out, which is frustrating, as many (though not all) are quite interesting on their own, and could even had their own feature-length stories. Instead of just one character who's acting as a proxy for Allen, we get a dizzying array of them: Jack as the young and hungry Allen (Eisenberg's hyper-literate New York upbringing makes him a perfect surrogate); John as the middle-aged Allen, full of regret and struck with Ozymandias melancholia in the face of such history; the young newlywed who has an opinion on everything; Leopoldo as the guy who finds the media attention aggravating and enjoyable in equal turns; Allen playing himself, an older father who fears retirement just as much or more than he fears death. While it's an interesting idea in theory, it's not handled dexterously enough to completely fit together.

To Rome With Love is a charming trifle that won't necessarily sate Woody fanatics but will please the Midnight in Paris crowd. It's still a better choice for theatergoers than plenty of other summer movie options.