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Whatever Works
Whatever Works | |
| Rated: | None |
| Director: | Woody Allen |
| Cast: | Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood, Patricia Clarkson |
| Release Date: | 2009 |
| Genre: | Romantic Comedy |
Opens July 3 at the Charles Theatre and AMC Owings Mills.
By Bret McCabe | Posted 7/1/2009
After fortysomething movies and more than 50 years a comedic writer, Woody Allen may finally be pulling the veil off his attitudes toward women a little too candidly in Whatever Works. Toward the end of this very Woody Allen version of a romantic comedy about the relationship between Boris (Larry David), a cantankerous sexagenarian who came this close to winning a Nobel Prize, and Melodie St. Ann Celestine (Evan Rachel Wood), the twentysomething Southern belle turned his misanthropic understudy/paramour, Boris' hold on the young woman is beginning to loosen. She even informs him of what she thinks about the matter, and Boris looks at her with a mix of confusion and surprise that borders on disgust and says: "You mean you have your own ideas?" It's perhaps the nicest thing Boris has to say to her the whole movie, making Works feel less like an intelligent and witty entertainment and more like a movie installment of Hot Chicks With Douchebags riddled with shtick-y banter. Please, Allen, if you're going to remake yourself, just go back to Spain already.