Review: Whatever Works

In recent years Woody Allen's work has been hit and miss, some of his films even fail to get a general release in this country. His last release, Vicky Cristna Barcelona, was fair at best and spent too long concentrating on crazy Penelope Cruz and less on the more interesting Rebecca Hall character. For his latest, Whatever Works, Allen returns to New York and teams up with Curb Your Enthusiasm's Larry David who essentially plays Allen in this film. The basic plot sees David's Boris taking in a Southern runaway Melodie played by Evan Rachel Wood. Boris essentially hates everything already has one failed suicide attempt on his hands while Melodie is a chipper God-fearing Belle. Melodie starts to buy into Boris' world views and soon an unlikely relationship develops which sees the two of them get married. Things are complicated with the arrival of Melodie's over-the-top mother and then her father. There was a lot of Woody Allen's early dialogue that is heard through the lips of David and indeed some of his diatribes don't really fit into the plot but are just random thoughts that Allen wanted to slip into the script. To an extent Allen is going back to some of his more memorable pictures most notably Manhattan which also had a similar age gap relationship and also gave a several sumptious shots of New York. And indeed Allen has included lots of the Big Apple's landmarks as Boris gives Melodie his own unique take on the city.

Any fans of Curb Your Enthusiasm will probably appreciate David in this film as he brings most of the elements of his persona in the hit show to this film. In fairness he does know how to deliver a good deadpan line and there are some very decent laugh-out-loud one-liners. Evan Rachel Wood showed how she has matured as a performer, even though she is playing a young innocent this is probably her most grown-up turn to date. She interacts with David better than you would expect and the scenes that just feature the two of them together are some of the film's best. However as Melodie's parents, Patricia Clarkson and Ed Begley Jr., steal the show as their Christian values are tested and changed as they are desensitised to New York's culture. Although there are some things that I didn't like about the film, for example Melodie's younger love interest to me felt even less appealing than Boris, overall this was at times very funny and had a good ensemble cast. Maybe not a complete return to form for Allen but certainly one of his funniest films in quite a while.