EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU

LOOK, I’M WOODY. HOWDY, HOWDY, HOWDY.

Starring A Load of People Who Can’t Really Sing

What The Fuuuu

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Ever wanted to hear Jack’s Raging Bileduct burst into song over how much he loves his fiancée? Longed to watch Drew Barrymore’s lips fail to sync up with the soundtrack but look pouty anyway? Thought it should be whimsical lyrics falling out of Mr Orange’s throat instead of cascades of intestinal blood? THAT’S A BINGO! One of the few joys of watching latter day Allen is that when he’s not bludgeoning careers he’s flipping them about, making straight-laced do-gooders lurch to his frequently rubbish tune. Everyone wants to work with him, so everyone does, and normally before they’re uber-famous or pissing on red carpets. This leads to wonderful situations like those mentioned above, as well as seeing a pre-swan-breakdown Natalie Portman playing a ditzy, boy obsessed schoolgirl with a load of no-marks who never made it. It’s light, it’s stupid, it’s happy, and the fact that it drags in actors known for more serious work is a delight to behold. There is a sense that Allen’s run out of ways to address middle-class non-problems by this point, resorting to a knockabout sing-along as a desperate way of repackaging old observations, but the whole thing is performed with such a sense of gaiety that you somehow forget it’s faults, culminating in a simple dance by the side of a river that’ll make you a believer in Goldie Hawn. And that’s a hell of an overachievement.

DECONSTRUCTING HARRY

LOOK, I’M WOODY. HOWDY, HOWDY, HOWDY.

Starring Woody Allen

Trailer

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A clip-show of stylistic tics, Billy Crystal and overbearing star-fucking that somehow manages to hold it all together with a splatter of old-fashioned wit and good-humour. It has to be said at this point, in the dawn of his artistic drudgery, how reassuring a presence Allen still is in his own films. His acting is perfectly in tune with his writing, his delivery lifting even his most tired observations into a smirk or a smile and his floundering elevating the performances of the professionals around him. Deconstructing Harry suffers in the same way that Celebrity does; the star turns, the Robin Williamsssss and Demi Moores only drag the film down with stunt casting and a lack of attachment to Allen and the story itself, making the narrative as blurry and indistinct as Williams’ predicament in his segment. (He plays an actor who starts to blur around the edges, like on film, but in real life. It’s diverting for a bit, and sort of clever. LIKE THE FILM.) Allen works better with character actors; people who ‘get’ his style and approach. You can basically divide everyone he’s worked with into those that understand his films and those that don’t, and the changes in tone are incredible to witness. Generally the more understated you are the better, which gives power to his character studies and psychological evaluations but slurps the fun out of his broader comedy. Deconstructing Harry ultimately fucks up by being too many things, and even a cursory glance at the DVD blurbs to come suggests he used to be much better at writing about himself. We’ve got to go back, Marty. BACK TO THE PAST. Where we’re going we’ll need some sort of mass transit system.

Wait, isn't that the music from The Mask in the trailer? The Mask is great! Go watch The Mask instead. It's The Mask!

CELEBRITY

LOOK, I’M WOODY. HOWDY, HOWDY, HOWDY.

Starring Kenneth Brannagh

French Trailer Which Somehow Makes The Film Seem Better Than It Is By Being In French

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Just… odd. Stuffed full of quality actors (Pre-Jowly Dicaprio, Judy Davis, Hank Azaria) but disjointed as a chainsaw accident victim with a mouth full of tacks. Kenneth Brannagh is a nightmare, copying Allen’s shtick action for action and word for word; even Scarlett Johannson did a better job of being Alleny in Scoop, though Brannagh’s never been trumpeted for his subtlety. His performance sucks the film out of the vague reality that Allen usually skirts around, making the film a celebrity stuffed sketch show without the jokes, the one saving grace being the extended segment with Charlize Theron as a no-name nymphomaniac model which is every bit as good as it sounds. Everyone else is underused or ignored or given shoddy material that seems to be left out of his other films, whilst the only entertainment comes from spotting gestating actors in a pre-fame indie test-tube (Sam Rockwell, that odd-looking man from Entourage, J. Jonah Jameson). And that’s not a film. That’s a catalogue for casting directors, and too superficial for words, so these ones had better stop now. These words, here. They’re done.

SWEET AND LOWDOWN

LOOK, I’M WOODY. HOWDY, HOWDY, HOWDY.

Starring Sean Penn

TRAILER

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Right, love then. It’s all you need. The secret to Allen’s best work seems to be focus and love for the subject matter, and since he seems to hate the world with 95% of his molecules it’s difficult to find something to invest in. Luckily the other 5% is an adoration for women and jazz guitar, and that’s what makes Sweet and Lowdown function as a compelling film, that and the sterling work of Sean Penn and Samantha Morton. She’s amazing. She’s the heart and soul of the film. And she’s completely silent. Penn plays jazz guitarist Emmett Ray as a man in thrall to his own skill and talent, drawing on his real-life ego to incredible effect; it’s amazing to think Allen nearly played the role himself, choosing instead to bolster his credibility with an actor who knows what he’s doing. Luckily Woody confines his own appearances to talking heads, a group of jazz aficionados waxing lyrical on the merits of Ray’s temper and technique, whilst the rest of the film plays out as a more tightly focused essay on talent and artistry akin to his later work with Vicky Christina Barcelona. In fact, it’s all so convincing and well put together that it’s almost… oh. Oh wait, this is clever. Search Wikipedia for Emmett Ray. Whoops. Nice job, great film, but very specialist. So… MAYBE.

CURSE OF THE JADE SCORPION

LOOK, I’M WOODY. HOWDY, HOWDY, HOWDY.

Starring Woody Allen

TRAILER

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Oh Good God, this is even worse. It’s a period screwball-comedy-thing set in the 1940s and everything’s terrible. He’s dragged in Dan Ackroyd and his face is melting into his chest, and he just looks upset. Ackroyd, not Woody. This is one of the only films where Allen admits that he fucked up, suggesting that it might have been better to cast another actor in the lead role instead of resuming his own bumbling anal-retentive shtick in a film noir setting. He’s damn right. It’s another one of his comedies where everyone involved looks slightly uncomfortable with the material because it’s ropey and unfit for purpose, built on the flimsiest hypnotism plot and threaded through with inanities and out-of-date observations. There’s a lot to be said for Allen’s individualism: in an era of factory-deficient sperm joke Apatow rip-offs it’s heartening to find a jazz-scored spoof of movies that most of today’s generation have never even heard of. But that doesn’t make it good. It doesn’t make it funny, and it doesn’t make it worth sitting through. It’s like a puffin – you’re glad it’s in the world, but when was the last time a puffin gave you a hernia through laughing too hard? When was the last time a puffin picked your kids up from school? They only do anything for David Attenborough anyway, and unless he’s a big fan of Allen’s post millennial output, then this analogy is going nowhere. Like the film! LIKE THE FILM!

HOLLYWOOD ENDING

LOOK, I’M WOODY. HOWDY, HOWDY, HOWDY.

Starring Woody Allen

TRAILER

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Woody Allen’s great at playing Woody Allen. This isn’t a joke, he’s brilliant, and his neurotic persona is funny, endearing and perfectly-pitched even as the rest of the films he produces crumble around him. It should be – he’s been honing it for forty years. But what if this isn’t Woody’s real act? What if the stuttering, ad-libbing apologetic nonsense was just for the cheap seats, something for the cartoonists to sketch and the idiots to guffaw at? What if his real act was an elaborate, decades long role as a shit film-director making shit-films? And what if he told us as much in a movie?

Well, it wouldn’t be very good. It’d still be lazy, inept, overlong and condescending. But there’d be… Actually let’s stop this, it’s a real movie and it’s called Hollywood Ending. It sees Woody play an aging, heralded director who goes blind during the making of his comeback movie. The film within a film is terrible, but it does very well in France, and Blind Woody lives neurotically ever after.

Allen’s real-life films are still screened at Cannes every year, despite being awful. He’s still held up as a genius every time he attends, and every actor in Europe still desperately wants to be ‘directed’ by him.

So Hollywood Ending is basically one of two things. Either Woody’s laughing with us; he knows he’s a great director, we know he’s a great director, and we’re chuckling at a comedy version of him that doesn’t know what he’s doing. But there’s a problem: this isn’t a good film, because it’s not funny.

Or… Allen knows he’s a hack. He knows he’s terrible now, he knows he can’t direct for love nor money, and he’s made a film laughing at that fact. But again, this still isn’t a good film, because it’s not funny.

Hahahahah.