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Thursday, July 9, 2009
Movie Review: Larry David in Woody Allen's Whatever Works
Posted by Anthony Nicholas on Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 12:33 PM
Woody Allen is one of the luckiest filmmakers when it comes to casting, and he always seems to get the best and hottest actors available. Many consider his latest European-centered films an improvement from his previous outings this decade, and while that is true for the most part, it should be noted that his recent casting choices are the reason why. Vicky Cristina Barcelona was very enjoyable, but the success of the film is due in large part to the actors. The script for VCB wasn't nearly as good as Allen's best, but Bardem, Cruz and Hall exploded with chemistry and created something special.
Allen has similar success (to a lesser extent) with his latest, Whatever Works. This time he has the benefit of Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood, Patricia Clarkson, and Henry Cavil (of The Tudors fame). They all do wonders with a mediocre Allen screenplay supposedly written way back in the 1970s .
David plays Boris, the Allen role, wisely injecting much of his own comic persona in the part. He is a reclusive quantum physicist who rants about the problems of the world to anyone who will listen. After he begrudgingly lets a Mississippi runaway live with him, he begins pushing his world view on the impressionable young girl. Wood and Clarkson make their shallow southern stereotypes endearing, and Cavil is British and charming, which is all he needs to be I guess. Does it all work? For the most part. There are plenty of laughs, and Whatever Works is Allen's funniest film since Deconstructing Harry. But is also has plenty of scenes that fall flat.
Maybe it's the Seinfeld connection, but the film almost feels like a sitcom full of Will and Grace-like situations. Whatever Works is even constructed like the first season of a sitcom, starting off slow while building up its premise. Plus, many of the jokes fall flat. Even when David has his fourth-wall-breaking opening monologue, it goes on for 3 minutes too long and becomes grating. But as things pick up, and more characters are introduced, a bunch of zany romantic entanglements occur simultaneously. There are some damn good one-liners in there, but even the second-rate ones make the cut due to the delivery of the actors.
Despite Whatever Works being very minor Allen, I still grinned at his idea of a fairy tale. In most Hollywood movies the main characters find some sort of faith in a higher power by the end. But in Allen's tale everyone becomes an atheist and they live happily ever after.
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