SCOOP

LOOK, I’M WOODY. HOWDY, HOWDY, HOWDY.

Starring Woody Allen

Trailer

M

The old bastard shows his face at last, and we’re finally getting somewhere. Though still a definite maybe in the grand scheme of asking, Scoop at least shows tingles, shoots of the genius that’s been stamped on Allen’s forehead for so long, doing so with a wit and lightness of touch wholly absent from his other recent attempts. It’s still too early to form the coveted Unified Theory of Allen, but Scoop suggests a good film, bad film, good film, bad film hypothesis akin to the Star Trek movies, albeit with more nerds, unsubtle Jewish guilt and terrible dialogue. Lighthearted is the lazy watchword here, with a plot that even the characters don’t care about chugging along slowly under a barrage of endless Allen-talk whilst pretty established actors trill along to his past reputation. The continuing theme of his London work seems to be to drag every actor in Britain into his maelstrom of averageness whilst carting a drugged Scarlett Johansson after him to smile and look pretty in glasses and pretend to be his daughter. So far so crud. But Scoop has a knowingness about it, an intelligence wholly lacking from his other recent work with the exceptions of Vicky Christina Whosit’s ruminations on art; we see a comic afterlife, witty banter about Alzheimer’s, the basic sense that Allen for once seems to know what he’s doing. And while it doesn’t make for a great film, it’s still a willion times more entertaining than watching Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell sit on a small boat hurling cockney accents at each other. The key to understanding what may lead to greatness in this retrograde retrospective comes from a scene early on; Allen, essentially playing himself, acts out a tired, old-fashioned magic show as the ‘Great Splendini’. Though the magician is a terrible old fool and the audience can see how every trick is performed, they nonetheless laugh and clap along regardless. Now that’s meta. Much meta.