Para Roma, com Amor

Most of Allen's movies of the '70s and '80s never exceeded a 90-minute running time. Since then his films have become longer and his latest here stretches one's patience at times. It presents five sunny tales in the Italian capital and one of them...

Woody Allen’s character in “To Rome with Love” feels inadequate if he’s not working, whether or not he has any quality ideas. Ah, the veteran writer-director knows himself so well.

To Rome with Love marks Woody Allen's first film since staging a comeback (of sorts) with the vastly entertaining Midnight in Paris, and it is, as such, disappointing to note that the movie, which admittedly does start out with some promise...

Once upon a time, calling a movie "lesser Woody Allen" might be considered a slap in the face. Now, it's more-or-less expected. In the last decade, Allen has directed two good movies: Match Point and Midnight in Paris. Everything else has been mediocre.

There are three million stories in the Eternal City; Woody Allen tells four of them. For his follow-up to the enjoyable but overpraised Midnight in Paris, Allen goes To Rome with Love and promptly loses his way.

Woody Allen leaves New York City again for another trip to a storied European capital.

To Rome With Love possesses the same quirkiness that Allen has had for his entire career and even peppers the movie little Woody-isms like “Ozymandias Melancholia,” but it all amounts to very little. The filmmaker will forever be known as one of...

Woody Allen hasn’t made a memorable movie since “Match Point” in 2006 when he began his series of European-based films. He showed a brief spark in 2008 with his Spanish installment “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” but the aging director is so much less...

As writing goes, Woody Allen's Oscar-decorated pen is about as prolific as they come, reliably cranking about an average of one script a year -- and this is not a fabricated statistic -- since the Johnson administration. Which raises a question: Does...

Writer/director Woody Allen continues his film travelogues in “To Rome with Love,” touring The Eternal City with four separate vignettes. An all-star cast – including Jesse Eisenberg, Ellen Page, Alec Baldwin, Penélope Cruz and Woody himself...

Continuing his cinematic tour of Europe, encompassing “Match Point,” “Scoop,” “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” and “Midnight in Paris,” among other diversions, writer/director Woody Allen arrives in Italy, where his ensemble cast courts anthology-style...

"With age comes exhaustion," according to a rueful line late in To Rome with Love, and it serves as a fitting diagnosis for Woody Allen's latest fallen souffle set in a European cultural capital, its four narrative threads afflicted with feeble timing...

Woody Allen has been globe-hopping for a while now; and in “To Rome with Love,” he’s alighted upon the Eternal City – with very mixed results. He himself plays a role in the film as an uncomfortably retired opera director who flies with his wife...

Woody Allen's European comeback tour continues in To Rome With Love, after checking London, Barcelona and an Oscar-winning stop in Paris off the list. For the first time, the 76-year-old filmmaker's creative jet lag is showing.

If it's a zinger capped by the phrase "leper colony," if there's a hotel room being broken into by house detectives, if it's Penelope Cruz spilling out of an outfit borrowed from Mira Sorvino in "Mighty Aphrodite," then it's time for the new Woody Allen..

The characters’ adventures in Rome give us a kind of romantic travelogue, taking us to places visitors don’t normally see, while savoring a different pace of life. This is Woody Allen: Later Years classic – he seems to express a greater contentment...

Does Woody Allen repeat himself? You might as well say the Beach Boys did a lot of songs about surfing. The theme of “To Rome With Love” is Woody’s big idea: that enchantment/magic/art is the only relief, yet an ultimately unsatisfactory one, to the...

While the title might sound like a letter to that eternal Italian city (It certainly looks lovely here), To Rome with Love is more a bittersweet missive to the regretful. With the film, Woody Allen (who wrote, directed, and has a prominent role as one...

Continuing briskly along his sightseeing tour of European capitals, Woody Allen brings the perpetual shtick to the Eternal City. When in Rome, his cast includes himself, Judy Davis, Alison Pill, Penélope Cruz, Roberto Benigni, Alec Baldwin...

The latest stop on Woody Allen’s postcard tour of the great European capitals is Rome—“the eternal city,” per one character’s dreamy description, “it never changes.” It also never comes to convincing contemporary life onscreen, though it sure looks...

Woody Allen has built one the greatest careers in cinema, a towering combination of comedy and drama. In the past decade, the diehard New Yorker moved his workshop overseas. In "To Rome with Love," he has built a coffin to contain his most tired themes an

“To Rome with Love” is the kind of Woody Allen comedy that makes people who aren’t fans of Woody Allen comedies secure in their assessment, and makes the auteur’s fans grimace and say, “Well, OK, disregard that one. Have you seen ‘Annie Hall’??”

Armed with his tourist map (the Trevi Fountain, the Colosseum, the Forum, Villa Borghese) and a bit of the magical whimsy of his last film, Woody Allen has pieced together To Rome With Love, which is what it says it is: a love letter to the great...

Can Woody Allen do for the Eternal City what he did for the City of Light in his Oscar-winning script for Midnight in Paris? Don't get greedy. To Rome With Love lacks the overarching theme of time and regret that distinguished Allen's last romantic...

Woody Allen has entered a phase in which he seems less movie director than travel agent, dispensing scenic Euro vistas, new versions of old jokes, and his own version of storybook swag — ''fables'' with all the depth of designer bonbons.

Following the outsized success of Midnight In Paris, Woody Allen presents another tale of mystical comic romance set in a postcard vision of a European city. Lacking a central conceit as cohesive as his last travelogue comedy, To Rome With Love feels...

To Rome With Love Allen spins four separate tales into one frothy romp that's thoroughly enjoyable to watch even as it only barely breaks the surface. But it's packed with terrific actors and it makes Rome look gorgeous.

AFTER the lovely surprise of Midnight In Paris it’s dashed expectations once again for a Woody Allen film.

He's been to London, Barcelona and Paris and now Woody Allen has made another of his luxury-tourist stopovers in a European capital, shot in a honeyed sunset-light and recycling picturesque cliches around half a century old.

Woody Allen's latest film is simply terrible. Horrendously, lazily scripted, it is a complete, laugh-free disaster from beginning to end. Once the world's greatest writer of comic dialogue, Allen, admittedly in his dotage, seems to have lost his touch...

WHATEVER Woody Allen does these days, it's a pleasure just to see him keep working. His latest comedy may be a step down from the emotional high of last year's Midnight in Paris, but it's still a relaxed, funny showcase for his enduring obsessions and...

More madness in the midday sun than Midnight In Paris. Baldwin, Cruz and Davis shine in a farce that overstretches itself into bellylaugh hits, but also some satirical misses.

Woody Allen's To Rome with Love began with better titles. Yet despite the exquisite locations of the filmmaker's first story of love, Italian style, this bland ensemble romance deserves the generic name rather than the clever working titles it started...

We have to thank Woody Allen, really. Without the American filmmaker’s works, we wouldn’t have had the good fortune to enjoy the sights and sounds of Barcelona (2008’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona) and Paris (2011’s Midnight In Paris).

The extent to which you’re prepared to enjoy To Rome with Love will be determined not only by your overall Woody Allen appreciation but by your ability to enjoy some deliberately wacky comic decisions.

Aiming to offer fresh insights on amore, adultery and the fickleness of fame, To Rome With Love unfortunately doesn’t break any new ground for the prolific writer-director. Despite his usual repertoire of punchy one-liners, Allen’s star-studded...

Allen and Ellen couldn’t be more apart, but in her short career, the Juno actor has managed to cultivate around her a similar quixotic buzz – of standing consciously and conclusively apart from the rest.

Woody Allen, once reckoned the New York director, has in recent years hit the tourist trail, making movies in London (three times), Paris (twice), Barcelona – and now Rome.

Woody Allen's new film, 'To Rome With Love' isn't nearly as inventive or as fascinating as last year's Midnight in Paris, but it is nevertheless a light, frothy confection that you'll have trouble hating.

Woody Allen's European vacation winds down with four tales that indulge his usual preoccupations: hookers, sell-outs, fame, mortality, and hot bi chicks. Alec Baldwin plays the sell-out, a shopping-mall architect trying to stop an idealistic student...