Jami Bernard
Gary Dretzka
Leonard Klady
David Poland
Doug Pratt
Ray Pride
Stu VanAirsdale
..Gary
Dretzka
..Leonard
Klady
..David
Poland
..Ray
Pride
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In the 67-year-old Woody Allen's latest paean to stunted growth, Anything Else, the straightforward widescreen framing and autumnal gleam of Central Park and successive Manhattan street scenes by ace cinematographer Darius Khondji caresses the eye. Still, it's a bit of a waste, isn't it, using the cameraman who shot City of Lost Children and Se7en to take pictures of Jason Biggs seems a foolish waste. (Khondji seems to have spent a lot more productive time lighting the splendid production design of the tchotchke-choked apartment sets.)
The rest of Allen's splenetic abomination is a repellent, incoherent, fitfully funny life of Jerry (Biggs), an unfunny comedy writer who we never witness either being funny or in the throes of wit. He's often toting manila envelopes around, with "special material" for nightclub comedians. Note to Woody: stationery is not funny in and of itself.
Jerry's best friend and mentor-in-life is the creepy Dobel (Allen), a high school teacher and autodidact sociopath who wants to write comedy as well, but who fills Jerry's ears with paranoiac rants, including several about the Holocaust. His character is neatly described as a "raving psychotic lunatic" even before he apparently murders a "porcine" state trooper. But the bulk of the movie is given over to Jerry's year-long relationship with Amanda (Christina Ricci), an overmedicated, manipulative twerp, a controlling, chain-smoking, status-obsessed Kewpie harridan.
Anyone who still has withering nostalgia for the now-distant high points of Allen's career will be sorely tested. There are lifts from old material: Amanda wants to be a singer (See: Annie Hall) and Jerry's agent is an old-school fraud (See: Broadway Danny Rose), yet there's so little here that DreamWorks' decision to cut Allen loose would have made more sense if they'd paid off his contract before this one slipped through. As in most late Allen, he's almost unspeakably clueless with actors: Ricci flails through a improbably over-the-top hyperventilation marathon that almost drove me out of the room.
There's also woeful anachronism throughout, with these jazz-mad twenty-first century twentysomethings bonding over Billie Holiday and exchanges about sex sounding like rewrites of photocopies of 1960s Jules Feiffer materail. The sound, except for voices, is as flat as in late Luis Bunuel movies, in which he took "sound editing" credits even after going stone-deaf. Still, Ricci, in her charmless role, is often displayed draped over furniture in panties and a filmy cotton camisole, nipples taut against the thin fabric. Amanda prates on about being "fat" while adults in the crowd must decide whether to look away or leer admiringly like Allen and Khondji. At least Ricci doesn't have to kiss Allen.
A DreamWorks film release of a Perdido production. Produced by Letty Aronson. Director/screenplay, Woody Allen. Camera, Darius Khondji. Editor, Alisa Lepselter. Production design, Santo Loquasto. Costumes, Laura Jean Shannon.
Jason Biggs (Jerry Falk), Christina Ricci (Amanda), Woody Allen (David Dobel), Danny DeVito (Harvey), Stockard Channing (Paula), William Hill (Psychiatrist).
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Anything
Else |
Release
Date: September 19, 2003
Rated: R
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Cast: Woody Allen, Jason Biggs, Stockard
Channing, Danny DeVito, Christina Ricci
Produced by: Letty Aronson
Screenwriter: Woody Allen
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Distributor:
DreamWorks
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Review Date: September 19, 2003
