Never Trust a Naked Bus Driver

I know everyone likes my infrequent round of movies, so here’s the latest one. Jo and I saw and enjoyed Anything Else last night. Fizzy had a rant some time ago about the media’s perception of the Woodster and no doubt I’ll follow it up here. Anything Else is a solid little comedy, containing as many laughs as your average Austin Powers movie, which is to say not laugh a minute, but a few chuckles along the way. Big difference being, something like Austin Powers gets lauded as benchmark comedy and Woody Allen is constantly derided and compared to his much finer earlier works.

The film has a fair number of terrific one-liners, one in particular being Allen’s Bordel telling Jason Biggs’s Falk of conjuring up a masturbatory threesome with Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren, “In fact I think it’s the first time, those two fine actresses have ever appeared in anything together.” Dobel on Falk’s girlfriend “The Pentagon should use her hormones for chemical warfare.” I could go on…

Jason Biggs is in every scene and plays what would be perceived as the Woody role. Allen’s part itself is slightly different from his usual roles. Although playing a fledgling comedy writer, as he has in the past, he is also a former mental patient and a man struggling to cope with his rage and his obsession with firearms and assembling a ‘survival kit.’ I did think however that this part, played by someone like Jack Nicholson or Gene Hackman could have become something much bigger. Woody’s skills as an actor are limited and although perfectly fine onscreen a stronger actor could have made a lot more out of the part. Of course budgetary restraints would have made such a move difficult and Woody does like to appear in his pictures.

Ned Flanders “I like his films, but I don’t like that little nervous fella who’s always in ‘em.”

On the whole the reviews have been predictable. "sour and overlong romcom," (Daily Telegraph), "The puckish one-liners, the witty asides, the kvetching displays of neurosis - they appear as poor ghosts of the things we once loved," (The Independent). Quite why standard reviews always concentrate on his films from years ago, I’ll never know. No one does it with any other director. I never heard anyone say of Amistad, ‘wasn’t as good as Jaws,’ or of Minority Report, ‘it was all right, but doesn’t really compare with Schindler’s List.’ Maybe it’s cos Woody tends to do relationship movies and doesn’t vary the genre in which he works.

There are lots of directors whose best days are long behind them, but who don’t receive the same tired criticisms journalists and TV based movie review folk churn out for Woody. William Freidkin, John Woo, Brian De Palma (I’ll get to him later), Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas to name but a handful. Woody Allen has delivered another good wee comedy, that while not a touchstone in comedic terms, does the business in telling an amusing story with nicely drawn characters and lots of good gags. It gets 3 Tom stars out of 5. I look forward to his next picture and with catching up with the last two which received limited and no theatrical releases here.