I love Woody Allen’s movies. I love that he makes one a year every year, and that even if the quality can vary they’re dependably quirky and charming, that he’ll always be nebbish or have someone playing nebbish in them. That I can sit down and get the same white-on-black opening titles once a year, the same ruminations on life and love and the meaning of anything. I hope he finds a magical secret to living forever and makes movies for another couple of decades.
I say that to preface my review of Allen’s latest because while I found it typically charming (and sometimes hilarious, that poor wet Pagliacci!) I feel like it’s a very minor film. Nothing here is new, and what’s here has mostly been done better elsewhere. It’s still a good time, to be sure, and there are some great actors that Allen uses remarkably well (Eisenberg is a brilliant Allen stand-in, while Penélope Cruz continues to steal scenes when he casts her), but ultimately it seems aimed at the Allen faithful, who are the types who would most notice its thematic redundancies.
Still, it’s worth watching, I feel, and I hope you at least check out my review!
This film really disappointed me because I thought Allen’s writing would at least be somewhat humorous, instead this played off more as just him trying to phone it in. Never thought I’d see that with a Woody Allen movie. Tsk tsk. Good review Matthew.