Review of Whatever Works (2009) by Archibald T — 24 Mar 2011

Boris married his first wife Jessica for all the wrong reasons. It leads him to commit suicide. It didn't work. If it had he wouldn't be telling us his story. An opening monologue directed to us, the audience, introduces what Boris is like as a person: A profound and insensitive soul who sees the world in a negative light.

That's until he meets a runaway homeless girl from Mississippi named Melodie. She's an impressionable southern gal. He insults her to no end for being what he likes to call an inch worm. "You're a brainless little twit who couldn't last 3 days in New York" he tells her. She needs a place to stay and Boris, too tired to decline, lets her stay.

He gives her a tour of New York or the way he see's it. She tells him about the first time she lost her virginity behind the tent at the fish fry and you can see as she tells this tale how innocent she really is. Boris finds this not to be charming because he wants no emotional attachments with her.

Boris awakes from panic attacks, mostly due to his obsessive thoughts of death and the black abyss. Melodie is there to comfort him and turns the television on to some show which really calms Boris down. For a man who wants to be isolated, it's nice to see some company hanging around.

She begins to have a crush on Boris who decline's her offer due to their age differences and his crazy world views. She gets a job as a dog walker and meets a guy named Perry. They go out on a date, but it doesn't work out. She comes back to Boris place explaining everything she hated about the evening. Looks like Boris's theories are beginning to rub off on her. She even starts to coin the phrase Whatever works. Something Boris always uses.

This turns into a hilarious turn of events when Boris immediately marries her for this alone. He believes finally that somebody out there in the world understands or at least wants to understand about his views of the world. They're together for a year, Melodie is now a nanny and Boris is still having those panic attacks. Then disaster strikes when Melodie's mother enters the picture. She shows up with horrible news that Melodie's father has left with Melodie's mother's best friend Mandy.

Melodie's mother is now a single woman in New York where the possibilities are endless. She is pursued by one of Boris's friends, Leo Brockman, who loves her pear shaped butt and her perfect breasts. I couldn't agree more! Brockman finds talent in the photographs she took of her daughter and home. They begin a relationship which eventually turns into a threesome with one of Brockman's friends. Over the course of a year, Melodie's mother has become a New York photographer who is in love with two men for whom she lives with. She is happy. Now she wants her daughter to leave Boris and be with an Actor named Randy Lee James.

Randy and Melodie bump into each other. They have chemistry. It's something different than with Boris. So, Melodie takes the leap and sleeps with Randy. Her father comes knocking on Boris's door looking to get back with his wife, but that doesn't work out since his wife is happy without him.

Melodie's father left the woman he was seeing because deep down he's really gay. He confesses this to another gay man at a bar where the two of them share a bit of conversation. Melodie's father finds happiness.

So does Melodie in the arms of Randy. She breaks up with Boris.

So where does that leave Boris? Suicide again. He jumps out the window. Luckily, fate would have it, he lands on a woman who is a psychic. He falls in love with her. It all then leads to Boris and the psychic, Melodie, Randy, Melodie's mother and her two lovers, Melodie's father and his gay lover spending time together on New Years Eve watching the ball fall as it rings in a New Year.

That's pretty much the film. The character Boris spends some of the time speaking to the camera for which everyone thinks he's crazy for doing because they don't see anybody watching them. Boris does though, that's why he's a "genius". An okay time waster with Woody Allen zingers galore.