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The most "Woody Allen" Woody Allen movie of the decade, and the best unless you're a fan of his recent dramas (personally, I think they're ponderous drivel). A cool, detached, low-key sort of comic experiment where a Nobel-Prize-winning physicist and devout New Yorker (Larry David) falls in love with a loopy twenty-year-old Southerner (Evan Rachel Wood). As expected, David's dour, secularist Weltanschauung clashes with Wood's warm, holistic approach to life. As unexpected, Wood converts wholeheartedly and almost immediately to David's worldview, becoming a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker in short order. Her mother (Patricia Clarkson) and father (Ed Begley Jr.) come to New York to bring her home and, improbably but entertainingly, lose their provincial prejudices just as soon as they arrive. Since David is clearly a mouthpiece for Allen, the story implies that Allen's completely lost the capacity for self-criticism that made him such a compelling storyteller in the '70s. But unlike other recent Woody Allen masturbatory fantasies, the combined wit and charm of Allen and the cast make this one worth watching. Larry David has said in interviews that he's not an actor, and it shows -- he basically plays himself -- but this happens to be the perfect strategy for the role of a funny rear end in a top hat. If you treat this as a long, non-canon Curb Your Enthusiasm episode with a very famous guest writer, it can't possibly disappoint you. 4/5
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Dec 17, 2009 01:50
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 02:44 |
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