Woody Allen, who turns 60 this year, is a relic. He may still look young; he may continue to attend basketball games with the adopted 24-year-old daughter of his one-time consort, Mia Farrow; he may still be howered with Oscar nominations, “as he was in February for his farce Bullets Over Broadway. But he is a relic nonetheless, the last remnant of a time in American life when “even the most critically and financially successful purveyors of pop culture longed desperately for the one award they were sure they could never receive: the mantle of seriousness.”

His latest film, Mighty Aphrodite, is a wan little comedy about Lenny Weinrib, a sportswriter who discovers that the birth mother of his adopted son is a hooker and “porn actress. He sets out to save her life, rescuing her from her pimp and fixing her up with a young boxer. The whole movie is so thin and vapid it would hardly be worth noting except for one thing: It features a Greek chorus. Yes, a Greek chorus — 20 men in robes and masks who shuffle back and forth on the stage of an amphitheater, commenting in unison on the plot.