In Rome, the America tourist Hayley (Alison Pill) meets the local Michelangelo (Flavio Parenti) on the street and soon they fall in love with each other. Hayley's parents, the psychiatrist Phyllis (Judy Davis) and the retired music producer Jerry (Woody Allen),travel to Rome to meet Michelangelo and his parents. When Jerry listens to Michelangelo's father Giancarlo (Fabio Armiliato) singing opera in the shower, he is convinced that he is a talented opera singer. But there is a problem: Giancarlo can only sing in the shower.

The couple Antonio (Alessandro Tiberi) and Milly (Alessandra Mastronardi) travel to Rome to meet Antonio's relatives that belong to the high society. Milly goes to the hairdresser while Antonio waits for her in the room. Milly gets lost in Rome and the prostitute Anna (Penélope Cruz) mistakenly goes to Antonio's room. Out of the blue, his relatives arrive in the room and they believe Anna is Antonio's wife. Meanwhile the shy Milly meets her favorite actor Luca Salta (Antonio Albanese) and goes to his hotel room "to discuss about movies".

One day, the middle-class clerk Leopoldo (Roberto Benigni) becomes a celebrity and is hunted by the paparazzo. A couple of days later, he is forgotten by the media.

The American architect John (Alec Baldwin) travels to Rome with his wife and feels nostalgic since he lived in the city thirty years ago when he was a student. He meets the student of architecture Jack (Jesse Eisenberg),who lives on the same street that John had lived, and he invited to drink a coffee at his house. Jack lives with his girlfriend Sally (Greta Gerwig) that invites her best friend Monica (Ellen Page) to stay with them in their house. But soon Jack has a crush on Monica.

"To Rome with Love" is a romantic movie by Woody Allen with four independent stories of love, adultery and dreams in the Eternal City. The most curious is that the stories are not entwined like usually happens in this type of movie.

The story of the caretaker that can only sing operas in the shower is sarcastic, with the typical humor of Woody Allen that performs a neurotic and insecure character.

The story of Antonio and Milly is funny, with the sexy Penélope Cruz performing a prostitute with a perfect Italian.

The story of Leopold is a joke with the present moment of the world, where mediocrity becomes famous without reason only because, for example, she is hot or he is a soccer player.

The story of John is thought provoking, with a mature man returning to his youth trying to fix his own mistakes. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Para Roma, com Amor" ("To Rome with Love")

I haven't admittedly seen enough of Woody Allen's films to judge where To Rome with Love stands. Annie Hall, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Manhatten, Husbands and Wives and Hannah and Her Sisters I love, and Midnight in Paris was also hugely enjoyable. There are a number still though that I need to watch or re-watch, I remember liking but not loving Vicky Christina Barcellona and not liking Scoop at all but that might change on re-watch. I was left disappointed by To Rome with Love though, it is not as terrible as I've seen cited on IMDb as there were parts where I was entertained, but it wasn't really great either.

There are things I did like of To Rome with Love in general, before I get on to what was good and bad about the four segments. The film looks absolutely gorgeous, Rome is stunning and very like a character itself and the photography compliments it wonderfully. The soundtrack is infectious and hugely memorable, with a lot of zesty Italian flavour. Some of the acting is good also and there is one delightful but all too brief cameo, and the script does have its funny moments.

Much doesn't work though, the pacing is very uneven, some of it feels rushed and others too drawn out. While there are some funny parts, there are just as many awkward and clunky parts as well. Nothing really is that insightful or thought-provoking, there is the odd classic Woody Allen moment but at the end of the day it feels under-cooked. To me also, I found only one character that I came close to caring for. The four segments have good parts and bad parts, but on the most part they seem overlong, often with an interesting but thin concept that feels overstretched, and irrelevant to one another. If they were half as long I think they would have been effective.

For me the newlyweds storyline was the best one. Some of the most beautiful scenery of the film is in this segment, and there are some genuinely funny moments like the husband falling off the chair at the sight of his new wife with another man. The characters are not particularly well developed, you never know them well enough, but they are well played. Ornelia Muti makes a cameo, and it is delightful with her still looking great, but you do wish she had a bigger part. Penelope Cruz steals the show here, she is breathtakingly hot- she always was but I can swear she gets more and more so- and she plays the only character in To Rome With Love that comes across as likable as I liked how straightforward she was. Where the segment didn't work so well was the all-too-convenient ending and how it did feel at times like five different plots.

Close behind is the segment with Jesse Eisenberg and Alec Baldwin. The best part of this segment is Baldwin, the best lines go to him and he relishes them in a direct and very funny performance. Jesse Eisenberg is endearing and Ellen Page makes the most of her somewhat ironic role. Greta Gerwig is underused and doesn't have enough time to shine properly. Again there are some good moments and dialogue with Baldwin getting the best of it. But at the same time, Gerwig's dialogue sounds awkward too much, the segment later drags on for too long and ends on an underwhelmingly stupid note. I also wished that it expanded on Baldwin's character, I still don't get its significance or point in the story.

Woody Allen and the opera singer in the shower segment is in third place. The scenery is great, Judy Davis's(who is wonderful in this movie, third best actor in the film after Baldwin and Cruz) dialogue is highly amusing and Allen has some nice ones too(like the Imbecile line) and Fabio Armiliato has a wonderful voice. Allen himself has some good moments and lines, but often he does seem as though he's trying too hard. The man in the shower idea is very one-joke and silly, but in this film it was meant to be and for a vast majority of the time it was classic Woody Allen. As dragged out as it became though, it got increasingly ridiculous. The Pagliacci performance for instance was wonderfully ironic and did a good job of poking fun at badly done concept opera productions, but at the same time it did come too late and the practical problems of staging Pagliacci in that way were too numerous to ignore.

Roberto Benigni's story was the worst. And actually apart from a priceless line from the chauffeur and the lovely scenery and soundtrack, it was the only one that I didn't like at all. The story was just too contrived and thin with the much-overdue moral far too obvious, and Benigni in a very underwritten role comes across as too much of a clown, especially when he is in the road shouting his head off. The writing also was just lazy and unfunny. I understand completely that it was a story about somebody suddenly becoming famous and it certainly happens in real life. But while it is an everyday occurrence and had potential to be shown in a movie if written well, there was just nothing new or interesting about it, telling us things that we already know.

So all in all, not terrible or great, but uneven and disappointing. 5/10 Bethany Cox

In order to do a honest review, we have to show no favoritism. And if this was a love letter to Rome, it was nothing more than a tourist postcard.

The storyline with Woody Allen is passable. I hated the boyfriend. Making him so annoying was a mistake. Woody had a few good lines but he was the only highlight.

Penélope Cruz is another who's alone in her storyline. She had no help. The guy is doing a nervous Woody and doing it badly. The girl is naive, and separated from the other half of their storyline.

Did anybody find the Roberto Benigni storyline funny? At best, it was cute, but it was never funny.

Jesse Eisenberg's storyline actually had some fun especially with commentator Alec Baldwin. Although, I thought Ellen Page had absolutely no chemistry with Jesse. I get the story was for Jesse to go against the grain. But Jesse and Greta Gerwig share so many of the same mannerism. It just works so much better with Greta.

Everywhere there were problems.... and tourists... both distracting.