WHATEVER WORKS
Sony Pictures Classics
Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey Karten
Grade: B+
Directed by: Woody Allen
Written By: Woody Allen
Cast: Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood, Patricia Clarkson, Henry Cavill, Ed Begley Jr., Michael McKean, John Gallagher Jr., Jessica Hecht, Carolyn McCormick, Christopher Evan Welch
Screened at: Sony, NYC, 5/19/09
Opens: June 19, 2009
We’ve all heard that line from romantic movies usually intoned by a guy describing his terrific first date: “She’s smart, she’s funny, she’s unpredictable, I’m crazy about her.” The same should be said about “Whatever Works,” a wholly delightful, intelligent movie, the clever lines coming at us right, left, and most importantly center. We’re treated to a show by actors whose characters are somehow believable despite their eccentricities and the bizarre ways they choose to become friends and lovers to folks who seem their opposite in temperament.
Welcome back to filming here in the Big Apple, Woody! You’ve come across with a film which has rarely a dull moment.
The principal role, one which could have been performed by Woody Allen himself (in fact one wonders why he stayed behind Harris Savides’s camera instead of in front) is taken by Larry David (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”), a 61-year-old Brooklyn born actor, as Boris Yellnikov, a brilliant physicist who, he insists, “almost won the Nobel Prize.” Despite his intelligence, in fact because of his smarts, he is a deeply unhappy man. Why so? He looks upon a world that is filled with “inchworms, cretins, morons, imbeciles” and the like in a universe that he believes is falling apart. He’s an atheist, or to put it in more diplomatic terms, is a secular humanist who bellows his views not only to the people around him but directly to us in the audience. Of all the characters who inhabit the movie, he is perhaps, unfortunately for us, the only one who sees the world as it really is.
“Whatever Works” is a theatrical piece, with many of the conventions of live performances. Sometimes, as with David Mamet’s “Oleanna,” a production that’s electric on the stage is a dud on the screen. But unless you rigidly place stage conventions such as monologues in a box, something suitable only, let’s say, in an off-Broadway theater, you should have no problems with the booming, acerbic statements that Larry David’s character comes up with, facing us in our theater seats directly. Boris regales us with his view of the world, a guy whose glass is neither half-empty, nor half-full, but almost completely drained of optimism. He demeans everyone save himself, with points of view of universal dissolution that are now not so out-of-sorts given the way humankind perpetually finds ways to provoke self-destruction.
One evening, after Boris has once again spouted his ideas to his pals outside the downscale digs he moves into after dumping his rich wife and failing in a suicide attempt that leaves him with a limp, he finds a hungry, homeless Melody near his doorstop asking for help. He reluctantly invites her in (can you believe “reluctantly” when you’re considering Hollywood’s most adorable star?), insults her daily, even lectures to her about the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The only reason the lovable Melody St. Ann Celestine (Evan Rachel Wood) becomes infatuated with this guy who is decades older than she is that Melody is, to put things most diplomatically, as dumb as dirt. The story takes a turn when Melody’s Christian-conservative southern mom, Marietta (Patricia Clarkson), finds her daughter and is stunned at the much older man she has married. As life has a way of creating some remarkable about-faces despite our being set in our ways, not only does Marietta become a different woman when she falls for two guys, but Marietta’s equally Bible-thumping dad (Ed Begley Jr.), now estranged from his wife, sees the light—and the light no longer shines on the likes Jerry Falwell or Rush Limbaugh.
In showing parts of New York like the Statue of Liberty, Grant’s Tomb and Chinatown, Woody Allen may not be selling a romanticist’s view of the Big Apple that he filmed in “Manhattan,” nor does “Whatever Works” contain the depth and gravitas of his masterwork and most celebrated picture, “Annie Hall.” Still, given the powerful performance of Larry David, (though his array of insults of humankind become repetitious after a while and just short of annoying), and the always stellar work of Patricia Clarkson in the role of a religious zealot who turns artiste while enjoying a ménage-a-trois, “Whatever Works” is a wholly entertaining movie with a strong, if overused moral. In a script that he wrote thirty years ago, expecting to put Zero Mostel in the lead role, Mr. Allen wants us to ignore what other people might be doing that would not be appealing to us but which we try to emulate, thinking that theirs is the way to live. Instead, be yourself, take every joy you can in this sometimes crazy world, and simply do whatever works.
Rated PG-13. 92 minutes. © 2009 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
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