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Actually the greatest chuckle imaginable with this film would be going to opening night and seeing the young crowd’s reaction that they had been duped into seeing a Woody Allen film without their knowledge. The collective groan that will be heard the minute Allen makes his first appearance will be louder than those critics who had to fake how much they hated Gigli.

The ads don’t even acknowledge Allen’s presence with the film, instead focusing on a wacky romance with its young stars, Biggs and Christina Ricci. Yes, the film is about their relationship but Allen is not interested in associating them with the core audience who come out for generic teen sex comedies. They like Cole Porter and Billie Holiday, go to Diana Krall concerts and act like the neurotic adults that usually populate Allen’s prose. Which is all fine and good since I’m all for upping the intelligencia quotient amongst those worshipping Legally Blonde 2 and Uptown Girls except the film is devoid of wit and presents its situations in the same hackneyed fashion that you would expect from an amateur, not an old pro.

Biggs plays comedy writer, Jerry Falk, whose name continually comes close to Greg Focker country. Unlike the stereotypical male, Jerry has OVERcommitment problems. He just can’t say no and can’t break up with anyone. Not the low-rent Jerry Maguire-like agent (Danny DeVito) who seems to do his job while we’re told he’s underperforming; not the shrink who never opens his mouth to help him; and not Amanda (Ricci) whose early compatibility has given way to shrewish contempt.

Jerry never shows regret for the woman he cheats on (Kadee Strickland) after meeting Amanda, who was dating his friend (Jimmy Fallon, completely wasted) at the time. Now, (as just punishment, I suppose) Jerry has to whine to the fourth wall and his mentor, David Dobel (Allen) about how she won’t let him touch her anymore. Dobel then dishes out lame jokes, gives out the same advice (“leave everyone”) and engages us in discussion of fantasy threesome masturbation. Actually, who did I say is being punished again?

Biggs and Ricci are doing their best to play in the Woody world of overanxious talkers, putting their faith in the words of a writer whom actors still somehow look up to. However, nothing they have to say or act out is funny leaving them to stumble about with eccentricities that just leave them as unrealistic nebbishes who in reality would be telling the other to “go to hell” with the force of a cannonball shot out of a chili expert.

How long would you stay with a girl (admittedly, a rather sexy one with the head of a Blythe doll) whom you’re not married to, has no job, smokes against your tastes, cuts you short in the sex department at every opportunity, and then invites her even crazier mother to live with you? Poor Stockard Channing could have had the Dianne Wiest role of the year here as Paula, but even she is shortchanged by not being crazy ENOUGH! It’s a performance alright, but imagine the possibilities of an unemployed, live-in mother with grandeurs of lounge singing who dates a half-her-age horse whisperer who likes to bring cocaine into stranger’s homes. Imagine all you want, because it’s still funnier in print than it is in the movie.

It’s impossible to describe how off the comic timing is in a scene that involves Jerry making his case (on Dobel’s say-so) for keeping a rifle in a house (not a Gub, I mean Gun, but a rifle!), Amanda’s protests against it, DeVito calling Jerry to split-screen the scoped frame (which Allen hasn’t used, I believe, since Manhattan) and Paula trying to get Dobel to push a piano. It’s a screwball scene in the middle of a relationship comedy with more flashbacks than Dennis Hopper on the set of Apocalypse Now. As a part-time musician, Allen should be all too aware of the concept of rhythm as a full-time filmmaker.

The best thing to say about Allen’s 2003 now titled fall project is that it isn’t quite as bad as The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. This film has, at least, one big laugh when an older couple walk out of a movie theater and wonder “why they couldn’t leave the house after the dinner party.” One can’t make another understand why that is funny and certainly no one showing up for a Jason Biggs comedy will even know it’s a joke. And frankly, I’m not the one indulging in condescention when Allen only sat through a clip of American Pie to cast Biggs. Perhaps someone can buy him a 3-pack of DVDs later this year and he can see firsthand that there’s more wit, heart and intelligence in that trilogy then the last three films (which includes “Hollywood Ending”) he has made. If life is truly like “anything else” as a wise cab driver says in the movie, then surely there has to be more to life than sitting through another disappointing Woody Allen vehicle.

link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=8162&reviewer=198
originally posted: 09/19/03 15:09:54
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