Whatever Works

Let me tell you a story. It’s about an older Jewish man with an extremely pessimistic view of the world who falls in love with a younger woman who comes from a different lifestyle. Wait, what? You’ve heard it before? Maybe that’s because it’s the premise that Woody Allen used in what are widely considered to be his best films, Manhattan and Annie Hall. Allen has decided to go back to the well for his latest film, Whatever Works, and the result is not a good one.

WW is a script that Allen wrote years ago, and it shows. It deals with the same issues as the two previously mentioned films, but does so in a stale and unoriginal way. How many times have we seen an Allen character break the fourth wall? I’m not sure, but this film is another one. The movie opens with Larry David talking to his friends and then talking to the audience. The difference between David talking to the audience in this and Allen doing the same thing in AH is that the supporting characters are aware that David is talking, except they can’t see the audience. If this sounds funny to you, then you’ll probably chuckle the first time they use the joke, but like everything in this movie, it’s repetitive.

There are times (maybe the whole movie) where it feels like Allen isn’t even trying. The movie is shot very simply and the directing feels lazy most of the time. He must have been napping in the director’s chair, allowing David to rant and rant without any form of restraint. Much of this film is done without a script, and it shows. I’m a big fan of Curb Your Enthusiasm and David’s performance on it, but it doesn’t translate to the screen. Remember the scene in Curb, where David is playing a part in a Scorcese movie and his acting is terrible? That’s pretty much how this entire movie is. David’s schtick works on the show because he’s playing himself, and you can tell that’s his true personality. The schtick doesn’t work because at no point does Boris Yelnisomething ever feel real. He only ever feels like David playing a part. We’re told Boris is a genius about every other sentence, but we never get any sense that he is actually a genius. All he does is spout pessimistic tirade after pessimistic tirade with some nihilist musings and refers to people as “worms”, and we’re supposed to accept this as genius. Please, grow up.

I’ll go as far as to say David’s performance is terrible, and all the other actors suffer for it. Anytime someone is involved in a scene with David, the performances are brutal. Evan Rachel Wood was fantastic as Mickey Rourke’s daughter in last year’s The Wrestler, and was the opposite of that in this, mainly because she spends the first 2/3’s of the movie opposite David. After some other characters are introduced later in the film and David’s screen time dwindles, both the performances and the movie itself get better, but it’s too little. too late.

Allen seems to be using this movie to make some brilliant commentaries on the world, but he comes off sounding like a 5th grader repeating something he heard his parents say. He comments on religion, sexuality, death, love, and everything else he can think of. Every time David speaks you can almost see Allen standing behind him going, “See how smart I am.” Part of me hopes that Allen was aware that he was treading all over his own cliches and that he was parodying his older films. Sadly, I know that’s not the case, which means Allen has become nothing more than a parody of himself, making a film that is one of the worst I’ve seen in a while.