An average movie

I was looking for something to watch with my wife but she didn’t care for anything I suggested but since she enjoyed ‘Magic in the Moonlight’, I thought we might as well try another Woody Allen feature. Well, if I thought that ‘Magic in the Moonlight’ was interesting but flawed, this movie turned out to be even more underwhelming. Basically, at some point, for some financial reasons, Woody Allen decided to shoot his movies in Europe so, after Paris, London, Barcelona, this time, we get Rome which sounded at first promising. Unfortunately, instead of a fully fledged story, he gave us instead a messy mix of 4 different tales which were all half-baked. The worst ones were probably the ones involving some Italian characters. Indeed, it was rather cringe-inducing to see Allen trying to joke about Italian people and their customs when he clearly have only a very basic knowledge of their culture. Concerning the other 2 plots, the one involving Woody Allen was really stupid but, I have to admit it, it made me really laugh. Eventually, the best tale was by far the one involving Jesse Eisenberg. Indeed, it could have been pretty neat if Allen chose to make the movie only about this character, even if Eisenberg was in fact rather poorly cast. Indeed, not only I had a  hard time to believe that he would eventually look like Alec Baldwin but he didn’t have much chemistry with Ellen Page either. To conclude, it was another really weak directing effort from Woody Allen but I guess it is still worth a look, especially if you are interested in this director.