Reviewing Woody Allen films is now an exercise in excuses

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Woody Allen on the set of To Rome With Love, which is getting middling reviews. (ANDREW MEDICHINI / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)

For the last two decades, American auteur Woody Allen has cranked out vaguely comic dramas or vaguely dramatic comedies. Neither genuinely hilarious (like his "early, funny ones") nor truly serious (like Crimes and Misdemeanours), they offer glints of potential genius undone by frustratingly lax, lazy, flimsy filmmaking. It's gotten to the point that The Atlantic recently featured a list of "Woody Allen's Best Bad Movies."

Woody himself admits that he's been working on "the quantity theory" -- basically making a movie every year in the expectation that the occasional film will manage to be good. In a 2010 interview, he concluded that perhaps a half dozen are better then the others, "but it's a surprising paucity of worthwhile celluloid."

Woody seems to have accepted this unfortunate fact. (Maybe all that therapy is good for something.) But for critics, especially those who came of cinematic age during Woody's golden period -- generally dated between Annie Hall (1977) and Crimes and Misdemeanours (1989) -- it can be difficult coming to terms with Woody's decline.

Faced with reheated Borscht Belt jokes and sub-par Bergman angst, reviewers have developed several coping strategies. As you can see, they range from the disingenuous to the downright delusional.

1. Diminished expectations:

These critics see themselves as hard-headed realists. Annie Hall is gone. Hannah and Her Sisters is gone. The time when Woody actually finished his storylines or developed his characters or bothered to express complete ideas is over. Get used to it. Adjust.

These critics are happy when Allen manages to be "not awful."

Thus, "if all you want is enough laughs to distract you from the void," Scoop is perfectly serviceable. Whatever Works might be filled with "the warmed over, the recycled," but "it's a relief when Woody doesn't embarrass himself."

"So what if To Rome with Love isn't a masterwork?" asks another reviewer. "We'll always have (Midnight in) Paris."

2. The triumph of hope over experience:

Many reviewers still cling desperately to the 1970s, paralyzed by a deadly mix of nostalgia and hope. "Oh, the hope," one reviewer cries in a tepid review of Whatever Works. She can never forget Annie Hall or Play It Again, Sam, she says: "We can't quite give up on that. We never will."

Other critics clearly think a new Allen movie is lousy but can't quite bring themselves to say it, out of respect for the older work. Instead, they label a film "lesser Woody" or "minor Woody." (The problem being that lesser Woody has become pretty bad indeed.)

3. Focus on the A-list cast. (Or, if necessary, on the cinematographer):

This is an effective strategy, since Allen still gets interesting actors and outsized personalities who are willing to work for scale. The reviewers can talk about everyone from Will Ferrell to Anthony Hopkins, from Mira Sorvino to Madonna.

When all else fails, they concentrate on the work of cinematographers Sven Nykvist, Darius Khondji, Vilmos Zsigmond or Harris Savides. The movie may be crap, but it's beautifully filmed crap.

3. But:

Many reviews hinge on the word "but." "An inconsequential lark, but an entertaining one." "Not great, but not grating," "Sweet but entirely inconsequential."

The word "underwhelming" also comes up a lot.

4. Mere pleasantness:

Many of Woody's late films are classified as light, silly, frothy, flimsy. "A beguiling trifle," "amiably minor," "a pleasant diversion," trill the critics in a chorus of not exactly resounding endorsements. Scoop is described as "perfect for an enjoyable afternoon in front of the tube," or "a nice break in the dog days of summer."

Who would have thought that one day reviewers would be recommending Woody Allen movies for their air-conditioning? Oy.

5. At least:

These reviewers feel obligated to point out that things could have been much, much worse. Woody can't help but pair up the 62-year-old Larry David and the 22-year-old Evan Rachel Wood in Whatever Works, for example, but "at least" we aren't subjected to sex scenes.

Or the critics search for compensations. "At least" it's Rome (or Paris or Barcelona or London) in Allen's recent Euro movies, the implication being that you can always look at the scenery.

And finally, the spoken or unspoken subtext of almost all Woody reviews of the past 10 years: At least it's not The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. That IS a blessing.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 14, 2012 G5