First, the good news. After the disaster of Woody Allen’s London trilogy, and the partial return to form of Vicky Christina Barcelona, this is back in Allen’s comfort zone. Set in New York and featuring a cast of Jewish neurotics and misfits, it’s funny, sweet, warm and sharp, looks lovely and is well acted.
The bad news would be that there is still the nagging feeling that we’ve seen and heard this before, and that Allen is rehashing material he has done better in earlier movies. Since Melinda And Melinda it seems to be a downward curve in terms of quality, and although this has flashes that he is back on form, they are no more than that – with lots of flaws in between. Compared to Annie Hall this is flimsy, compared to any of the London films it’s a masterpiece. Those three films – Match Point, Scoop and Cassandra’s Dream – are beginning to look like a huge blip in his CV, an experiment that went disastrously wrong and proved Allen has no ear for dialogue outside of his native New York. Characters sounded weird and clunky, virtually everyone was ridiculously posh and the films looked terrible – any shot in Whatever Works is infinitely better than the best shot in those three movies.
His big gamble here is to cast Larry David in the lead as Boris, a grumpy, ratchet old ‘genius’ who was once considered for a Nobel Prize in physics, although ‘I didn’t get it’. He is embittered, believes the human race is doomed and refers to everyone else as a moron. David has created a great screen presence in his own Curb Your Enthusiasm, but here, with Allen’s script, he takes a while to get into his role. For the first half hour he seems to be doing an impression of Allen, and it doesn’t work – only later does he seem really comfortable.
Into Boris’ life comes Melody (Evan Rachel Wood), a slightly clichéd dumb girl from the South who has run away from home. He takes her in and feeds her, she announces after a month she has a crush on him. Quite why a young girl would fall for a man who constantly refers to her lack of intellectual capacity remains a mystery, and this is Allen’s real Achilles heel (and has been for a long time) – he is also at least twice, probably three times her age. He evens corrects her grammar at one point – incorrectly.
If you can go with this plot the movie picks up from this point on. They get married and suddenly Melody’s barking mad parents turn up looking for her, assuming she has been abducted. Mum Marietta (Patricia Clarkson) is a bible-quoting mess, horrified when she meets a son in law who is older than she is. She decides to stay on, trying to set Melody up with a younger man, and discovers she has a talent for photography. Pretty soon she has turned into a bohemian hippie with two lovers, when hubby (Begley Jr) turns up.
These two characters lift the film in terms of pace and comedy – they are pantomime, sure, but at least they have lots of life and spark. Marietta’s journey from the Bible belt to Boho chic is very funny, and Begley has his own plot twist which produces plenty of laughs. By this time David has settled down into his role too, making the second half of the film way more appealing than the first.
Whatever Works has a high gag count, New York looks lovely and the underlying message – do whatever works to bring happiness in your life, as all is chaos – is a positive one. Allen is back in his old territory, and at least gets the way people speak right, yet there is still a feeling that his best work is some way behind him. Fans might have to accept that the days of Annie Hall and Manhattan, or even Crimes And Misdemeanours and Mighty Aphrodite, are long gone.
Just don’t make another film set in London Mr Allen – what’s that, you already have? Oh gawd...
Overall verdict: A partial return to form for Allen, with a great cast and lovely visuals making up for the feeling you’ve been here before. High gag count though.
Reviewer: Mike Martin
