In what is becoming an exercise in writing more concisely, I’m going to try to eviscerate a work from a few years back (Dante keeps you up-to-date on modern cinema, while I review things that I can dig up at the local library) in the most succinct way possible. I watched, Woody Allen’s Whatever Works recently and was absolutely appalled by the pathetically low-caliber tone that engulfed the entirety of the film.
The premise is amicable enough, Larry David’s neurotic, fourth-wall-breaking, recluse of a character, Boris, meets and falls in love with Evan Rachel Wood’s young, ignorant, optimistic character of Melody, who has recently fled her sheltered, chaotic life in the South and taken up on the streets of New York with nothing to her name. The two become married, despite Boris’ initial skepticism, and then live through one of the most awkward pairings imaginable. Again, this sounds like it could be, at the very least, an interesting premise. The simple fact of the matter, however, is that Allen has absolutely zero command of the storyline and apparently had no direction to give to either of his two leads. David plays himself, much as Allen is prone to do in his own on-screen endeavors, and Evan Rachel Wood plays with a southern drawl that, at times, actually made me wonder if by the end of the movie she was going to rip it off and expose herself as a con artist posing as a southern belle all for Boris’ money. What I mean to say is, atrocious, simply atrocious.
While the performances are stiff, forced, and phoned-in at their worst, the overall tone and direction of the film are what give it its most off-putting edges. The entirety of the premise and every subsequent action is regarded as though nothing will come of it. Everything is treated as a mild disruption, at best. Evan Rachel Wood prowling around a back alley, at BARELY eighteen, is treated as nothing, Larry David letting her into his home, despite being the most skeptical, cynical, pessimistic person ever, is treated as nothing, and their subsequent marriage is mentioned in narration. Even when Melody’s parents come back into the situation, nothing is done to merit any sort of sincerity or urgency about ANY matter. While this inconsistency could be chalked up to cynical comedic value, it truly only reads as laziness and general disenfranchisement on the parts of the writer, director, and actors. Nothing stands out as spectacular in this world, or even as “dramatic.” The audience is not presented with anything to care about because the characters onscreen don’t care enough, themselves.
Overall, Allen took what could have been a stellar premise and basically muddied it up until it became the trite, overdone, romantic, New York fare that he has become encapsulated with recently. With some of the worst committal to a script that I’ve seen in a long time, Whatever Works works in no way whatever. Err, strike that last pun, it’s just terrible. Yeah, that sums it up much better.
Score/Soundtrack: 42/100
Performance/Direction: 15/100
Cinematography/Aesthetics: 25/100
Script: 32/100
Overall: 19/100
xoxohearts,
Alex
1 comment:
When it comes to films like this unless its sci-fi I think we're supposed to leave our brains (and any semblance of reality) at the door. Woody Allen will never be exposed as the fraud that he is because everyone, for whatever reason, is dying to be in one of his films no matter how bad it is.
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