Whatever Works

I saw this movie in a packed cinema and the audience loved it to the extent that many applauded at the end. So I came home, looked it up in IMDb and read some of the review by professional film critics. What I found helps to explain why nobody reads papers anymore and why professional movie reviews are increasingly irrelevant. The critics drooled all over themselves for No Country for Old Man -- a ridiculous blood bath where the bad guy can see through walls, magically find people on the run, and kill repeatedly without raising much more that a mild interest from the local and state police. Yet many of these same critics think the characters in this new Woody Allen film aren't realistic. God save the film critics.

Back to the film. I can't remember the last time I laughed this hard at the movies, and I wasn't alone. It takes special talent to direct a movie that is so dependent on perfect comic timing to work, and the actors in this film hit their marks consistently. If there is character in this movie that shouldn't be the subject of study in an abnormal psychology class, I missed them.

If you care about intelligent movies for grown-ups, then you need to support movies like this one.

"Sometimes a cliché is finally the best way to make one's point." Boris (Larry David)

Woody Allen's witty movies may seem clichéd (love does indeed conquer all in most of his romcoms), but they do make a humanistic point couched in Allen's pessimism and nerdiness. With Larry David playing another Allen alter ego, Boris, a self-proclaimed genius, this misanthrope in Whatever Works is the best characterization of Allen in his recent movies. The movie works for me as the smartest, most enjoyable of this summer with a message countering Allen and his alter ego's world-weariness.

It doesn't take long to look at David's work co-creating Seinfeld and starring in his own Curb Your Enthusiasm to see that this world-weary worry wart is a good choice to play an Allen-like New York Jewish intellectual. Unfortunately his lack of real acting talent is a hindrance, especially when he slips into shouting many of his lines. Yet when David plays himself more than the stuttering Allen, he becomes relaxed and believable. When David speaks to the audience several times, the sincerity is powerful.

Allen wanted Zero Mostel to play this part; his death in 1977 put the script in mothballs for decades. As an accomplished Broadway and film actor, Mostel underscores David's limited acting range.

The conceit of Whatever Works is that older Boris in his 60's hooks up with twenty-year-old Southern Melodie (Evan Rachel Wood) despite his genius mind rejecting the whole affair as trite but his heart going with "whatever works." Throughout, Allen juxtaposes the Southern innocence with Northern experience creating a situation where NYC actually transforms the Southerners into urban sybarites, no better exemplified than the transformation of Melodie's mom (Patricia Clarkson) from bible thumper to artist humper with avant garde photos and multiple lovers. Even her ex-husband, John (Ed Begley, Jr.), has a NYC epiphany of the sexual kind.

Although Allen has his characters looking for love with results that will remind you of his Everyone Says I Love You, the sweetness is replaced with a philosophy that encourages searching out whatever works because of the transitory nature of love and life.

The mixture of love and cynicism allows deep appreciation of irony and the transformative nature of experience.

The critics have missed on this one. Don't believe the negative reviews. It's the funniest one from Woody since maybe Deconstructing Harry. Everything works. From the very original script, combining Allen's bleak view of life with effervescent farcical plot line, to uniformly fine performances from Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood, Patricia Clarkson, and the rest of the cast. Comedic sparks fly non-stop. Not just light chuckles here and there at Woody's witticisms, but loud all-out laughter. The scenes with Ed Begley's and Patricia Clarkson's transformations of 'classic text-book right-wing material' are especially hilarious. And in the end I came out from the theater, thinking that in a paradoxical way it was one of the most life-affirming pictures from the master.

Woody Allen is back to doing what he is famous for - clever introspective comedy - and he still does it well. He detoured into making crime-dramas, three of them - Matchpoint, Scoop and Cassandra's Dream. All of these were good, and one, Matchpoint, was brilliant. Then he made a pretentious drama, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which wasn't good (but people seemed to like it just the same).

Whatever Works sees him back to comedy, and back to his beloved New York (the previous four were all set in Europe). With the setting comes the standard Woody Allen neuroses, paranoia, depression and general philosophical musings that have been a hallmark of his films. The surprise is, for once he doesn't play the neurotic, paranoid, depressed lead character. No, this time Woody Allen stays behind the camera, and Larry David, of Curb Your Enthusiasm fame, takes the part.

Larry David does a great job in the role. He was born to play the curmudgeon, and play the curmudgeon he does, to the limit. It can wear a bit thin at times, but mostly he is screamingly funny.

Supporting cast are great too. Evan Rachel Wood is convincing as the dumb innocent Southern belle, and Ed Begley jr and Patricia Clarkson are solid as her parents.

Plot is good. Maybe a bit underdeveloped - some things happen too quickly and some characters seem too flexible - and some things seem a bit trite, but it works in the end. The dialogue, however, is great. Almost as good as Allen in his heyday of the late-70s and 80s. Biting, caustic, clever.

A very funny movie.

If ever a movie could be described as an allegorical rendition of a director's life, Whatever Works just might top the list.

Marking Woody Allen's return to his native New York City after a four picture hiatus in Europe, the movie tells the story of Boris Yellnikoff, played by Larry David (Curb Your Enthusiasm), the only actor working in Hollywood today who most closely approximates Allen himself in look, mannerisms, and philosophical outlook. Afflicted by numerous neuroses, Boris has become the ultimate pessimist, seeing life as one long water slide ride into an eventual cesspool. So bleak is his outlook that he becomes convinced that suicide is the only option, but even that cheap out fails him.

Fed up with the world, Boris turns his back on much that society has to offer, instead spending his days teaching chess to kids while publicly humiliating them at every opportunity. Yes, Boris isn't a happy camper, and takes pride in it. The fact that he's managed to maintain a core of four friends is a miracle in and of itself.

Then one day fate causes him to cross paths with Melodie St. Ann Celestine (played by the delightful Evan Rachel Wood), a country bumpkin runaway from the backwoods of Louisiana. She is Jethro Bodine to Yellnikoff's Einstein. A complete intellectual and generational opposite. Love at first sight it isn't, but given the axiom that opposites attract, Boris soon finds himself falling for the much younger siren (cue the Allen parallels).

While some critics have complained that much of the dialog comes across as stilted and unnatural (which it does), Whatever Works unravels more like a stage play than real life, which, I think, is how Allen meant it. As writer and director, he has lots to say here and refuses to allow such trivialities as natural delivery stand in the way. This isn't to say that the performances are wooden, but rather that nobody talks like Yelnikoff in real life, and I'm good with that. What's important here are the ideas, constructs and situations that Allen infuses in his characters.

Interestingly, while much of the movie's theme focuses on the serendipity of life, and thumbs its nose at the divine, the film can easily be viewed from both the atheistic and spiritual viewpoint, particularly given how events unfold in a seemingly manipulated manner.

While not Allen's finest work, Whatever Works will appeal to those who enjoy a light romantic comedy, particularly one that provokes a few sparks from our grey matter, while delivering its laughs.