Rating: **½ out of 5.
Woody Allen's new film Whatever Works is a likable, occasionally riotously funny, if a bit slight and predictable comedy about a misanthropic professor and self-professed genius (and angry chess teacher), played by Larry David (in a role originally written for Zero Mostel more than 30 years ago), who takes in a young Southern runaway and former beauty queen, played winningly by Evan Rachel Wood, against his better judgment.
What is interesting to me is how -- despite being based on a script Woody initially wrote in the 70s -- the film is further proof that Allen now has a harder time (or perhaps less interest, it's hard to know for sure) in creating films that balance comedy and dramatic depth, laughs and pathos, as he'd been able to more effortlessly do with outstanding scripts for Crimes and Misdemeanors, Hannah and Her Sisters and Manhattan. More recently, he's been inclined to keep things absolutely separate, it's either a comedy (in a lighter vein, such as Scoop or Anything Else) or dark and almost completely devoid of humor (Match Point, Cassandra's Dream). To be fair, Vicki Cristina Barcelona did have its comedic moments, but it was for the most part a probing, and often painful, drama. Whatever Works has its share of funny moments and lines, while also at least poking at the dark side. But it still feels as if Allen isn't willing to explore anything too deep here. These characters have feelings, and share them, but he doesn't really allow them depth of emotion that might take away from the comedy on the surface.
And part of the problem may be that this script didn't go through enough drafts since its initial incarnation. Yeah, I'll say it, this feels like a good rough draft that stopped there.
Larry David in a Woody Allen film seems a match made in heaven. He'd appeared in tiny roles in two previous Allen films but this is all David, here playing a character even more misanthropic than his Larry on Curb Your Enthusiasm. While that Larry actually has quite a few things that give him joy, with the Chekhovian name Boris Yellnikoff, is downright anhedonic. David would be the first to say (and he told Allen this in the press notes) that he's not really a gifted actor, and there are times he feels strained by any attempts at range (I think Mostel would've garnered more empathy and found more emotion). But he's a presence, and is great with his character's acerbic one-liners.
What will disturb some -- and he was asked about this on Fresh Air last week, deflecting the answer by saying people read too much into these things -- is the relationship between Boris and young Wood's Melodie, a sweet, undereducated soul from the South. Theirs seems a father-daughter relationship at first, and for the most stays that way -- even after they briefly marry. It's inevitable, then. How are we to not separate this from Woody's own relationship with his ex-wife's adopted daughter. (Granted, Soon-Yi would seem to have nothing in common with Melodie other than being young, at the time she met Woody.) I had to work to put these things out of my head while watching the film.
But even if you just take Boris' and Melodie's relationship at face value, is it believable? Well, no, but it's likely not meant to be realistic. And, hey, at least Allen admits it's doomed. I also was reminded of Woody's amusing Mighty Aphrodite script, in which a sweet but dim prostitute (Mira Sorvino) ends up falling for Woody's neurotic sportswriter, after his failed attempts to help her find success and love (because she's the real mother of his adopted child). It's a representation of the classic case of misinterpreting affection and appreciation for love, though some could see the scenario as a classic case of directorial ego fulfillment.
I do think Allen is also slyly satirizing both New York and American archetypes, even if a bit broadly at times. He likes playing with diametrically opposed intellects and styles, the verbal Jewish neurotic New Yorker vs. the quieter, sweeter Southerner, the religious/pious vs. the atheist, the artist vs. the practical, left vs. right.
What I would find more interesting is if Allen would try reversing gender in this kind of May-December romance for once. What if the misanthropic professor were a woman, and the runaway he takes in a male? Or were both gay? It's not that Allen hasn't written some wonderful female characters over the years, but clearly, he is not really interested in reversing expectations here.
Still, for sheer number of laughs, Woody hits with more lines than he misses. The scenes with David's Boris revealing his obsessive-compulsive side while brushing his teeth, or waking up with night terrors, are priceless.
And what Whatever Works also has going for it -- not unusual for a Woody Allen film -- is the casting. Patricia Clarkson, who has become one of my favorite actresses, so winning every time out, plays Marietta, Melodie's mother, a southern housewife who goes looking for her runaway daughter after catching her estranged husband in an affair, and becomes liberated when introduced to New York. Clarkson really lights up the screen, as her character charms the pants off two men (she has a continuous menage a trois relationship after her New York rebirth).
One issue with the script is how rushed the resolutions feel, however. Besides Boris' marriage to Melodie, and Marietta's quick shift to renowned photographer and bohemian, there is Ed Begley's John, Melodie's father, a southern chauvinistic husband who makes a "surprising" turn that I saw coming, but more importantly there is basically one scene that develops this switch (without giving too much away) in rapid fashion and then skips ahead to a happy ending. That's the irony of the film, too, is that David's Boris is a misanthrope to the extreme and yet things are wrapped up rather happily. Less so for Boris -- but he seems happy, too. That final New Year's Eve party reminded me of the final Thanksgiving dinner in Hannah and Her Sisters, which also saw things end on an up note, and while it verged on feeling tacked on there, the character development happened patiently in that film. It just seems out of place in a film whose main character tells us there's nothing to get happy about.
But as just a pure comedy, the film has the right combination of comically compelling characters inhabited by a perfectly cast group of actors. It's far from classic Allen and the story takes some irksome turns, but Whatever Works works well enough; it's just that it could've used a few more drafts. Even prolific, experienced writer/directors need revisions.
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As a side note, I've begun to notice in a lot of Woody Allen films, because he likes to use longer, natural takes, the supporting actors tend to feel less a part of the scene than do the central actors. There are times it even feels as if they're in two separate films, one style theatrical the other more cinematic, but both attempting to play off each other. At times this works just fine; but at others it becomes noticeable, and heere I spotted a few of those ungelled moments.
An Italian movie set in San Francisco that I'd amazingly never seen, Lucio Fulci's 
After watching and marveling at yet another superb Pixar film -- this time, 
Paths of Glory - 1957
