“Whatever Works”
3 out of 5 Stars
Stars: Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood, Patricia Clarkson
Director: Woody Allen
Rated PG-13 for sexual situations including dialogue, brief nude images and thematic material.
Running Time: 92 minutes
“Whatever Works” does work, at least to a minor extent.
The same way that last month’s “The Proposal” was an average Sandra Bullock romp, meant mostly for her particular fans, the latest Woody Allen comedy may be only best appreciated by devotees of his trademark brand of sardonic, urban wit.
This time, his kindred misanthrope Larry David plays the protagonist who somehow manages to bag a barely legal Evan Rachel Wood as bride. It’s icky but, yet, not infrequently funny.
Come to think of it, Bullock buffs and Allen/David aficionados must live on near-opposite ends of the movie humor firmament. If you prefer your laughs from the broad, easy and sweet instead of the wry, condescending, and semi-intellectual, well then, you’ve never liked the bespectacled filmmaker or the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star much anyway.
For the rest of us, this May-December romantic-comedy ranks in the mushy middle somewhere between the best (“Manhattan,” “Crimes and Misdemeanors”) and the worst output of the unbelievably prolific Allen.
He has made an average of about one film per year since the early 1970’s. Which means he just likes to keep busy and probably doesn’t care that about half of his films have at least some true genius in them, about seven or eight of them just completely stink, and the rest can feel tossed-off or redundant but are diverting to one degree or another.
To wit: “Whatever Works.”
Even when the writer-director chooses not to star — as in today’s picture — he usually includes a hapless hero that serves as alter ego for his own quipping Jewish New Yorker persona. Thus, only in Allen’s world could Miss Wood’s dim-witted southern blonde hottie Melody be the one trying to charm into submission David’s limping, neurotic, broke and very, very old physicist Boris Yellnikoff.
The wacky conceit gets even wackier when Melody’s horrified, repressed parents Marietta (Patricia Clarkson) and John (Ed Begley Jr.) show up. But they can’t fight Manhattan’s decadence and soon succumb to artistic and professional liberation, orgies and homosexuality — not necessarily in that order.
The situations are silly; the stereotypes run thick. But Allen’s appealing ensemble and pithy dialogue keep it tolerable. Those familiar with the artist’s personal life may find his continuing on-screen obsession with younger women — which has been a recurring theme for thirty years — a little creepy.
Nevertheless, the icon confirms again here that he endures.
