Review of Zelig (1983) by Mike B — 15 Apr 2005

[b]ZELIG.

[/b]This is easily the funniest Woody Allen film I've seen yet. It's a faux-documentary about a man named Zelig who is a human chameleon, able to turn into whichever dominant person is around him in order to feel accepted. I thought the joke would get old quickly with this one, but it didn't. Each act had a great new twist on the story and took it further and made it funnier. It's not my favorite Allen film, but again, it's certainly his funniest.

[b]BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA.

[/b]I wanted to like this a lot more than I did, but in the end it was the B-movie quality that turned me away. It was almost as if the film was good enough to have been an A-list quality movie, but Peckinpah settled for B-movie status because that's what he enjoys making. That's all well and good I suppose, but parts of this were eye-rollingly bad and took away from the impact of the film. Either way, it's like a dirty, disturbing, and morbid take on [i]It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

[/i][b]THE FRONT.

[/b]This is the best Woody Allen film I've seen and it wasn't even directed by Woody Allen. I liked it more than both [i]Annie Hall[/i] and [i]Manhattan. [/i]It was funny, touching, and relevent even today. It was everything I look for in a great drama and a great film. It's incredibly neglected in the buzz department on this site and in general. More people need to see this film, or the people who've seen it need to talk about it more often.

[b]THE WAR ROOM[/b].

I'm a pretty big documentary fan, but I'm not much on politics. Still, getting an inside view of a presidential campaign seemed interesting enough so I gave this a shot. Being a fan of Pennebaker, I thought I would like this more than I did. However, the film seemed to skip over the intriguing parts, like how Clinton's campaign heads (Stefanopolous and The Ragin' Cajun) dealt with the Gennifer Flowers debacle and other such scandals. Instead it seemed to be satisfied showing the two leads yucking it up at the camera and arguing over which insult to throw at Bush Sr. next. It was interesting for the most part, but underwhelming in the long run.

[b]VERA DRAKE.

[/b]Mike Leigh did an interesting thing with this film. He took great care introducing Vera and her family, spending more than half of the film following them around in their daily routines and getting us to feel for them. Then, in the second part of the film, Leigh moves at sprinter's speed to finish up what he started, and the transition was awkward and annoying. It's nice that the film didn't cop out with a sappy conclusion, but I could have used more time with the family and friends after Vera's arrest.