Review of Whatever Works (2009) by Jesse O — 11 Mar 2010

I'm a Woody Allen fan, and I don't know why. The camerawork is stripped to basics, the performances are always unrehearsed first takes (a lot of the time it shows), and the themes are often all too similar. Whatever Works suffers from these flaws, combined with the added weirdness of Allen once again living vicariously through his male lead, inexplicably desired by a much younger woman. Knowing what he's like in real life, it's easy to be put off by this sense of delusion, but at the same time there's something really charming about his work. The plots in these films are often laughably unrealistic, but that's part of the reason they can be so entertaining.

Larry David plays Boris, the Woody Allen archetype, a divorced and depressed cynic who just wants to be left alone. When an attractive young girl from the South literally drops onto his Manhattan doorstep, she makes it her mission to have him, admiring him for what she sees as great wisdom. A lot of the humour stems from the distinction between what Boris sees as super intelligence but what is actually melancholic arrogance. The movie gets truly interesting when the girl's parents show up, both running away from their lives in the deep south as their daughter did. The transformations they take on as a result of the big city are really amusing.

Many times during the movie I completely forgot I was watching Larry David - he basically IS Woody Allen, which is an interesting consistency among most of his leading men, but one that is fully realized here. But he also lays it on a bit thick, sticking pretty closely to Curb Your Enthusiasm but with the detriment of being scripted this time. Luckily, like most of Woody Allen's recent work, it's a great script - this is again an underrated film from one of the most interesting writer/directors out there.