Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Whatever Works (2009)




That's the irony of going with a title like Whatever Works when you have been scraping the barrel for the last decade.

I'm a Woody Allen apologist - but lately (and by lately I mean literally the last 10 years) it has become harder and harder to stomach the same old song and dance by the once-beloved director. It's not that he's just re-hashing the same old story arc, that has been his bread-and-butter from the beginning. It's that the older he gets, the less in touch with cinema and humor itself that is the problem. That is the most depressing part.

So when I heard that Woody was working on a movie with Larry David using a script that was written in his prime, I was cautiously excited.

Whatever Works is the old standby - a brilliant and socially awkward man ends up falling for a ditzy blond whose mother wants her to marry a younger man... blah blah blah pleh.

Not only is this movie shockingly (or not) similar to the standard Woody Allen movie, but Larry David's character is painfully unfunny and overall feels like a huge waste of potential from a comedy team that could have produced a lot better. It's autopilot in the worst of ways - no box office success, no critical acclaim, no funny. Why bother?

-U

1 comment:

Der Fanatiker said...

I hate to see Allen putting stuff like this out, but people only have what's put on screen and if that's crap it's crap, plain and simple.