Film review by John Campbell
Lured by the largesse of Euro promotional bodies, Woody Allen in the autumn of his career has made a mercurial passage through the Old World. He brained it in London with the cold-blooded thriller Match Point, bombed with the horribly pretentious Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona, soared to forgotten heights with Midnight In Paris and, in keeping with the pattern, has crashed dismally in this entirely forgettable dud.
The story, a fanciful concoction, is typical of an éminence grise who is content to re-work his own comfy formula. Of the many threads, one concerns Jack (Jesse Eisenberg) and his girlfriend Sally (Greta Gerwig). They’re both students, but somehow they can afford to live in the sort of Marie Claire pied-à-terre in Trastevere where Marcello and Sophia might have shagged in the days before millionaires bought the place out. Into their love nest comes Sally’s friend Monica (Ellen Page – an odd choice for a femme fatale) and, predictably, Jack is smitten with her while all the time he is receiving worldly advice from the renowned architect John (Alec Baldwin), whom only he can see.
Penélope Cruz, in her tiny tight red dress, is an absolute knockout as Anna the call girl and Roberto Begnini is well suited to convey the befuddlement of somebody overwhelmed by the noxious cult of celebrity, but Allen himself is a constant drag as Jerry, the retired opera conductor. His whining wit is the shtick upon which Allen has built his considerable reputation as a comedian (his genius as a filmmaker has, hitherto, been far more profound), but it seems not so much tired as utterly exhausted here, from the minute we encounter him wracked with anxiety over a bumpy plane landing – we’ve seen the routine far too often.
The photography is praiseworthy, with the caveat that any cinematographer who can’t find a few good images in the Eternal City might as well throw his camera in the Tiber, and the numerous scenes in which real life bystanders hang around gawking at the shoot is surprisingly hokey. c
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