Welcome home, Woody
After shooting fitfully funny films in England and Spain, Woody Allen returns to New York, and, working in predictable territory, brings forth an oh-so-predictable movie, "Whatever Works", and if he doesn't blast a home run out of the park, he rifles a double off the wall. With a script written for Zero Mostel, who died in 1977, Allen displays a familiar plot – himself as a crochety but wise old man, Evan Rachel Wood as a lovely and not-very-bright young woman – and keeps us laughing even as we know the punch lines.
Larry David is the Allen surrogate, a physicist named Boris who lives in Greenwich Village and hangs out and swaps yarns with three guys who would fit right in with my Friday lunch group. David is rather one-dimensional, using volume as a substitute for acting too often, but he's mostly good, although I wish I'd been able to see Mostel, a consumate comedian, in the role.
Boris both hates and patronizes just about everything and everyone, and his New York-sharpened tongue, courtesy of Allen, is a delight. I would have liked to have seen some time with the four guys on the new Times Squarelawn chairs.
He finds Melodie (a simple Melody would just not do), who attracts him and frightens him at the same time, and she – being Southern – is the perfect foil for his humor and his insults. But when Melodie's mother Melissa (Patricia Clarkson) arrives suddenly, the humor rolls into high gear, with Boris able to use her Southern evangelist ideas to good stead, and Melissa adopting an alternative life style with the speed of light. Ed Begley shows up as Clarkson's redneck husband, but then things turn a little too pat.
Although it isn't Allen at his best, it's Allen in good form, helped by the superior cinematography of Harris Savides, who has put a luster on some of Gus Van Sant's recent films and who makes New York look lovelier than Allen has in several films. As usual, Allen sings a love song to New York, pays homage to Groucho Marx as David hustles a little girl in a Washington Square Park chess game and just generally has a good time. So did I.
At the Plaza Frontenac.
-Joe