by Alex Bentley

When in Rome manages to stay out of the lowest rung of romantic comedies by the skin of its teeth.

You ever get the feeling that the movie you're watching has been cobbled together with multiple pieces that don't quite fit together? That pretty much fits When in Rome, the new romantic comedy starring Kristen Bell and Josh Duhamel, to a tee. The producers have gathered together a bunch of people and plot elements that have been successful elsewhere and threw everything at the screen to see what stuck.

Beth (Bell) is your typical unlucky-in-love workaholic, devoting all of her time and energy toward her job as a curator at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. When her sister Joan (Alexis Dziena) drops a bombshell that she's marrying an Italian man she just met, Beth is forced to take a break and celebrate Joan's wedding in Rome. And what are the freaking odds, she hits it off with Nick (Duhamel), the best man.

And there's your "meet cute" moment right there.

After a typical rom-com misunderstanding leads her to sound off her woes to the inanimate statues of the (fictitious) Fountain of Love, she proceeds to pick up five coins from the fountain to theoretically save the people who threw them from the beast that is love. In a magical twist involving lightning and lots of suspension of disbelief, those five men (because, obviously, she wouldn't just happen to pick up a coin a woman threw) proceed to pursue her with extreme vigor.

Up to this point, When in Rome is dragging because of the horrid rom-com stereotypes (seriously, a woman can't be happy unless she has a man?) and because director Mark Steven Johnson (Daredevil, Ghost Rider) and co-writers David Diamond and David Weissman (Old Dogs) have taken a loong time to set up the premise of the movie. But the film is partially saved by four of men chosen to portray Beth's stalkers (the fifth shall go unnamed to preserve the film's lone “plot twist”).

Yes, that's Will Arnett in a bad wig (and even worse accent).

Will Arnett plays Antonio, an Italian artist who shows his newfound love for Beth by painting a building-size nude mural of her. Danny DeVito tries to woo her by giving her his sausage(s) – he's a well-known sausage vendor. Dax Shepard is Gale, a male model whose love for Beth is almost equal to his love for himself. And Lance, the magician played by Jon Heder, thinks that the way to her heart is by performing lame tricks and eying her creepily.

All four garner a few chuckles along the way, helping make the film more bearable than it has a right to be. Arnett's Italian accent makes him less reliable than usual, but he's still the class of the party. DeVito's short stature unintentionally provides smiles as Bell towers above him. And Heder's over-the-top performance is saved by the semi-inspired cameo of Efren Ramirez (aka Pedro) as Lance's videographer, Juan. (Shepard has nothing going for him save for his muscles, so the less said about him, the better.)

Everyone knows that if you pick up a coin from a fountain, you'll be stalked by Danny DeVito.

Oh, you want to know about the chemistry between Bell and Duhamel? Meh ... they're okay in a “let's-stick-two-good-looking-people-together” kind of way. Both of them have their charming moments, but neither inspire any kind of hosannas. A running joke about Nick's accident-prone nature falls flat because it seems tacked on, as do several other sub-plots. Most egregious is the inclusion of Anjelica Huston as Beth's boss; an actress of her caliber shouldn't be reduced to a glorified cameo. That's more for someone like Don Johnson, who just so happens to play Beth's father.

When in Rome manages to stay out of the lowest rung of romantic comedies by the skin of its teeth. And if that's not a ringing endorsement, I don't know what is.