Dir. Woody Allen, 2003, USA/France/Netherlands/UK, 108mins
Cast:
Woody Allen, Jason Biggs, Chris tina Ricci, Danny DeVito, Stockard Channing
For the last thirty years Woody Allen has been releasing, on average, a film a year. A true auteur, he writes, directs and stars in most of them. His bumbling, neurotic onscreen character stammers out floods of existential angst and one-liners in his misadventures between the bedroom and the psychiatrist's couch. It is as versatile and iconic as Chaplin's tramp, only not as universal. Allen's films contain physical slapstick, but there is an intellectual element in his material that demands knowledge on the part of the audience and turns many off. With Anything Else his persona is back in two characters, and from the simple credits with trademark typeface and old time jazz, to the opening shot in Central Park, it is quintessential Allen. Anything Else doesn't compare to his earlier homages to New York, Annie Hall and Manhattan , or even the imagination of his recent Everyone Says I Love You or Sweet and Lowdown. And this romantic comedy treads familiar ground, but the route he leads the audience on is still wonderfully playful, insightful and absurd, bringing smiles both from the gags and the intellectual references.
Jerry Falk (Biggs) is a young, up and coming comedy writer in Manhattan, trapped in a dysfunctional relationship with the seductive and sultry Amanda (Ricci). Ever since she blindsided him at their fist meeting, he has been smitten, oblivious to her emotional inadequacies. His relationship with his washed up manager Harvey (DeVito) is no better. Their contract is up for renewal and although he knows he should move on, he is Harvey 's only client and worries how Harvey would cope without him. Amanda's self centred mother (Channing) moves into Falk's cramped apartment exacerbating his problems with Amanda. Falk seeks help, wasting his time with one-way psychotherapy sessions, but getting inspiration from a new friendship with sixty-year-old fellow comedy writer David Dobel (Allen), a worldly teacher with a penchant for paranoid philosophical musings drawn from an exhaustive vocabulary. Dobel becomes a big influence on Falk, and offers a tempting solution for him to start afresh in Los Angeles writing comedy for television, if only he can move on from Amanda and Harvey.
Biggs, better known as the lead in the American Pie series, is almost out of his depth here, but the odd shaky delivery is outweighed by the on screen chemistry he manages with both Allen and Ricci. Like Kenneth Branagh in Allen's Celebrity, Biggs adopts some of Allen's affectations creating an interesting juxtaposition between two similar characters forty years apart. In many ways Dobel is like an eccentric guardian angel, guiding Falk. But there's a chink in Falk's character. His naivety and lack of worldliness at the hands of Amanda, and his awe of Dobel aren't entirely convincing. Ricci is excellent, playing Amanda with an overt sexuality mixed with selfish, childlike game play driving Falk's frustrations. Reinvented and reinvigorated, Allen is hilarious as Dobel, saving the best lines for himself.
All the action is captured in beautifully composed widescreen frames by cinematographer Daruis Khondji, working with Allen for the first time and shooting with a warm colour palette in contrast to Allen's usual naturalistic aesthetic. Anything Else isn't Allen at his most serious; in fact like his last film, Hollywood Ending, it is rather silly. But it is very enjoyable, and the fact that Allen keeps writing such high quality work, with this frequency, is remarkable. Even when the jokes appear jaded, there is enough depth to his characters to fill in the cracks. And although he casts his young actors, Biggs and Ricci, in stereotypical moulds familiar from his previous work, Allen still manages to be as fresh and funny as ever.
Gavin Bush
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