Woody Allen has long been uneven. Consider that the truly excellent Crimes and Misdemeanors and Husbands and Wives bookend the awful Alice and Shadows and Fog. But at least back in the 1980's and the 1990's Allen produced some very good, highly enjoyable works to balance out his misses (and when Allen misses, he can really miss). Sadly lately Allen fans (and I'd still count myself among them as his great works are great) have had to suffer through little but misses. The 1990's ended with Celebrity and Sweet and Lowdown and you can make an argument that Allen hasn't produced anything at even that level since (those were enjoyable, but not up there with his best work). Match Point was the best of his works since 1999 ... but since he's made 7 movies since 1999, and since they include some awful bombs, that's not the highest of praise (though Jonathan Rhy Meyers was very good in Match Point).
Why am I going into this? Well this week's Netflix movie for me was Allen's Scoop. And remember a couple of sentences ago when I said "awful bombs" ... This movie is lame, ridiculous, tiresome, not remotely engrossing ... I guess one could make an argument that it's not as gratingly bad as a couple of his other recent works (Anything Else and Small Time Crooks), but when a movie is making you long for The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (yep, Scoop's much worse than that), something is very wrong here. And it seems that Allen's work will never again reach the heights of Annie Hall, Manhattan and The Purple Rose of Cairo. Hell, at this rate we'll be fortunate if he returns to the "heights" of Celebrity.
Can I find anything nice to say about this movie? Hmmm - Hugh Jackman looks very good in Diesel jeans, it's nice to see Fenella Woolgar for a few seconds ... that's pretty much it. The rest of it is completely forgetable.
Posted by armand at December 2, 2006 09:39 AM | TrackBack | Posted to Movies