First, an outing: I’ve never been much of a Woody Allen fan. Not big
on his movies, don’t want to eat him up with an
oh-so-witty-and-adorably-nerdy spoon. He almost ruins intellectual,
romantic New York City for me.
So maybe if you disagree in principle, you should treat my
borderline dislike of Allen’s newest, Whatever Works, with
distrust.
Even I don’t think it’s all bad. Larry David stars as Boris
Yellnikoff, a cranky, unlovable schlub and a Nobel-level thinker with
suicidal tendencies. Boris is constantly spouting his philosophy on
life — humans are a failed species, so do whatever works for you
so long as you don’t hurt anyone else — to his handful of friends
and even occasionally to the camera, breaking the fourth wall, though
to a lesser degree than Allen did in The Purple Rose of
Cairo.
David is fun to watch. He seems to enjoy rolling with Allen’s words
in his mouth. It’s easy to see Boris as a stand-in for Allen. As such,
David is perfectly cast. His voice and demeanor are more New York than
New York and his delivery is a raspier, lustier variation on
Allen’s.
So I can’t help but be annoyed as the plot sees Boris become the
object of a hot crush from a beautiful, nubile girl who is turned on by
his intelligence and crusty sexiness. Gross. In light of Allen’s own
well-documented personal peccadilloes: really gross.
The May to Boris’ December is Melodie St. Ann Celestine (Evan Rachel
Wood), a Mississippi girl homeless on the streets of the big city.
Boris takes pity on her and lets her into his home. He peppers this
“imbecile child” with his rants, and she eats it up with big eyes, her
heart agape at the unparalleled sophistication she’s witness to.
The failures of Whatever Works are Allen’s. If he has an ear
for the Yankee, he can’t help but put a little too much South in
Melodie’s mouth. And if Allen has love for his fellow New Yorkers, he’s
parsimonious when it comes to his country cousins. (Matters are
complicated with the arrival of Melodie’s mama, played by Patricia
Clarkson, and daddy, played by Ed Begley Jr.)
The actors mostly do right by their characters. David is especially
good, though his dialogue starts to sound like an old-fashioned
typewriter: talk talk talk talk talk zing!
Boris is having too much fun to convince us that he’s really a
miserable suicide risk. Of course, his screed of a persona is all an
act but once that magical boundary between artist and audience gets
sledge-hammered, it’s just us adults talking here. Lacking the
character’s emotional motivation, what the audience gets instead is a
self-wounded monologue yelled at us from a jackass who wants to be
loved without giving anything real of himself.
