Students travel to Rome with advance movie screening

A line extended from the door of the Whittenberger Auditorium in the Indiana Memorial Union Wednesday as students waited to see the advance screening of “When in Rome,” a romantic comedy set to release on January 29.

“I’ve never seen a movie here before,” said sophomore Abbie Oakley. “It looked like a good opportunity. You get to see the movie before everyone else.”

In the movie, Kristen Bell plays Beth, a workaholic down on her luck in love. On a trip to Rome for her younger sister’s wedding, Beth steals five coins from an alleged fountain of love and is then pursued by the five guys who originally owned them.

Josh Duhamel, Dax Shepard, Will Arnett, Jon Heder and Danny Devito play the parts of the five pursuers.

Senior Audree Notoras, film director for the Union Board, said movie distributors contact the board two or three weeks before they would like to screen the film.

“Our general philosophy is that some student is going to want to see it,”  Notoras said. “And you can brag to friends that you got to see it before it hit theaters.”

Most of the advance screenings fill the auditorium, Notoras said, however, less popular genres tend to leave the theater with empty seats.

“Usually it’s at least half full,” she said. “But there are many times when we have to turn people away.”

Notoras said she thought “When in Rome” was a great cheesy comedy.

“I laughed throughout it,” she said. “I thought the sister’s wedding was really funny, the way the two main characters met. The rest was a little over the top, but good.”

Junior Kristen Kolar, a campus employee for AMP Agency, handed out surveys asking students questions such as “who was your favorite character?” to get the initial idea of what people are thinking about the film.

“We send them to Touchstone or Disney,” she said. “They take viewers comments to possibly change it.”

Senior Rachel Elman said she thought the movie was cute. She said she heard about the advance screening through the Union Board and was interested in the film.

“It’s always fun to see a sneak preview,” she said. “I loved all of the scenes from Rome.”