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Woody Allen’s new movie, Hollywood Ending, might be the worst thing he’s ever done. The acting is poor, the script is embarrassing and, worst of all, it’s not funny.

Since it isn’t funny (and this strikes me as an objective truth), then what interest does it hold? Well, there is Allen’s obsessive life-imitates-art-imitates-life approach. As my friend Garth asked, “Doesn’t it star his ex-wife?” Not exactly. It actually features Tea Leoni, but she’s playing Allen’s ex-wife; and since Woody has religiously mined his own life for his movie’s plotlines (as he does in this film), Garth is forgiven for making an understandable mistake.

The real art-imitating-life focuses, as it usually does, on Woody’s character--Val Waxman--who, to quote the press guide, is a “two-time Oscar winner turned washed-up, neurotic director” who hasn’t had a hit in ten years and is in desperate need of a comeback. It’s been eight years since Bullets over Broadway, but close enough. 

Val gets the chance to make his comeback when his ex-wife Ellie convinces her fiancee, a big-time producer, to let Allen direct a movie about the streets of New York. But in a bizarre psycho-somatic episode, Val goes blind on the eve of the first day of shooting. 

Desperate to keep his job, however, he and his agent conspire not to let anybody know, and he directs the movie despite his condition. He uses a Chinese-American translator as his guide and spends most of his time gesturing wildly in space. When the translator is abruptly fired, he has to rope Ellie into his plot. Given this is Woody Allen we’re talking about, Ellie soon falls back in love with him.

On the surface, the material is ripe for a rip-roaring farce, and you would think the director of movies such as Bananas and Sleeper could pull it off. But Woody’s adventurous instincts have left him, and we’re left with lounge-lizard jokes about masturbation and the French. The new Woody could learn a lot from the old.

This comparison of various points in Woody Allen’s career requires some definition of terms. For the old Woody was actually young, while the new Woody is quite old. So, instead, let’s use the terms “former” Woody and “current” Woody, though even those are problematic since the current Woody is hardly au courant, if you know what I mean.

And let me point out that it isn’t fair to demand Woody make another Bananas. Francis Ford Coppola hasn’t made a Godfather since Apocalypse Now, so it’s no crime that Allen hasn’t made an Annie Hall since Manhattan. But do his lesser efforts have to be so embarrassing? The former Woody was willing to take chances with his material. He turned a love story into a political farce about a banana republic and then had the audacity to have Howard Cosell cover a coup d’etat as if it were a boxing match. Not everything in Bananas or Take the Money and Run works, but the high points (remember the soap gun in the rain?) are raucous. Even more recent comedies such as Manhattan Murder Mystery and Bullets Over Broadway have featured great comic timing (the moment when Chazz Palminteri kills a significant character off-screen is priceless) and wonderfully funny situations.

The current Woody settles for the possibility of comedy and doesn’t work hard enough to pull it off. In Hollywood Ending, there are a number of lines where I waited for a punchline that never came. “Have you ever seen Canada? Now I know why there’s no crime there.” Now that’s a good setup for a joke, but the current Woody seems to think that he’s already given us the joke. In the same way, a director gone blind is a wonderful setup for slapstick and farce, but Allen just wastes it. Most of the gags revolve around wild gesticulations (which are endemic to all of Woody’s characters) and Allen talking to no one in particular. It’s not even funny the first time. And Allen’s use of improv crashes and burns in every scene with Tea Leoni. The hemming and hawing just goes on and on until the scene mercifully ends.

Then, there is Woody’s ever-more distasteful obsession with young, far-too-willing actresses. When the former Woody dated a teenage Mariel Hemingway in the movie Manhattan, the film recognized that this was an indication of a weakness in character. The current Woody seems to take it as his birthright that he dates women less than half his age. So Hollywood Ending begins with Allen living with Debra Messing (“Will and Grace”), whose only function is to appear in low-cut hip-hugger jeans. But wait, it gets worse. The star of Woody’s film-within-a-film is the buxom Tiffani Thiessen (“Beverly Hills 90210”), who offers herself to Woody while wearing black lingerie, as if Woody’s persona was all it took for women to disrobe in his presence.

Not only has this routine gone on way too long, but the current Woody fails to capture any of the situations’ comic potential. In Bananas, Allen prepared for a hopeful night of lovemaking by sprinkling a little talcum powder on himself. But a little became a whole bottle, and soon the room was filled with a white talcumy fog. The effect was hilarious. The former Woody had to work to make love. Now, all he has to do is show up. Too bad the same isn’t true for making movies. 

J. Robert Parks 5/7/2002