Hollywood
Ending: For Woody Fans OnlyHollywood
Ending: For Woody Fans OnlyI may be the only film critic in America who will compare Woody Allen's new comedy Hollywood Ending with last week's Jason X. I think the same assessment applies. A week ago, I said if you are a Friday the 13th fan and a devoted follower of the invincible killer Jason Voorhees, you would enjoy the latest Jason flick
Similarly, if you are a fan of Woody Allen's neurotic, self-conscious verbal shenanigans, you will very likely enjoy the Woodman's latest effort.
However, both films are unlikely to pull in new fans.
I don't want to get predictable in my movie reviews. Hey, you write these things often enough, and you can get into a rut. You get predictable. You lose your ability to surprise readers with humor and insight. I don't want to say that Woody Allen being the ex-husband of Tea Leoni, the current boyfriend of Debra Messing from Will and Grace, and the object of sexual desire of Tiffani Amber-Thiessen from Saved by the Bell and 90210 is appallingly unrealistic and downright creepy. And I don't want to write two or three paragraphs in which I weep over not having gone to film school back when I had the chance so that today I too could be getting Woody- and Bogdanovich-caliber babes.
I don't want to do that.
But come on! I mean, jeez, I'm 31 and I am too old for Tiffani Amber-Thiessen!
OK. For the most part, Hollywood Ending is a lively, witty spoof on the business of movie-making. The Woodster wrote, directed, and stars as Val Waxman, a former genius director whose own raging insecurities and hypochondriac ways undid a once-promising career years earlier. As the film opens, Val is directing cheapie TV commercials in Canada and pining for his New York pad where the very hot Lori (Messing, excellent as a daffy, no-talent actress) waits for his return. However, ex-wife Ellie (Leoni) has a surprise for him. Since her divorce from Val, she has become engaged to a studio head (Treat Williams) and has worked her way up the film executive ranks. She is able to convince the Powers That Be to let Val direct the studio's next picture.
Woody being Woody, though, he makes Val almost unbearable to watch if you are not a fan of the man's twitching, almost-constant soul searching. Waxman gets himself into such a tizzy over his ex-wife's remarriage to a man vastly more wealthy, handsome, and successful than he (worst of all, he is from California) that he comes down with psychosomatic blindness just as he is about to start directing the new picture.
Hijinks ensue.
You can look at this flick two ways. Either this is Woody Allen saying "screw you" to the contemporary movie business. After all, he takes constant jabs (some funny, some too insider for even me) at the studio system, West Coast pretentiousness, test screenings, and the like. Or, you can ask yourself, "Why is Woody Allen doing pratfalls? Why is he ripping off Mr. Magoo decades later?"
Still, it is Woody Allen, and any Woody Allen film is going to have several terrific throwaway lines and a number of memorable moments in it. One of my favorite lines was Allen's "I'd kill to get this job, but the people I want to kill are the ones who are in charge of giving me the job!" Other stand-out moments include blind Woody inadvertently feeling up Thiessen on a sofa, and thinking her breasts are throw pillows; a scene in which Val's Chinese cinematographer comes screaming out of a rough cut of the disastrous film in the making; and Williams' great skin cancer line seen in the commercials.
I'm one of those critics who prefers the Woody Allen movies in which Woody does not actually act (or the ones in which only appears in a cameo). My favorites include Purple Rose of Cairo and Bullets Over Broadway. In Hollywood Ending," Allen looks all of 66. Consequently, when scenes called for him to make out with the much younger Leoni, more than a few people in the audience I saw it with actually said, "Ewwww!" I haven't heard that reaction to an on-screen smooch since Roger Moore locked lips with Grace Jones in A View to a Kill.
But to be fair, there were a smattering of audience members who were laughing hysterically at every Woody one-liner. In my experience, that's the way it is with most of the guy's films. A half-dozen or so in each theater will get every joke, just like most mainstream comedy fans will guffaw at Jim Carrey's antics or Eddie Murphy's humor throughout their pictures. But then again, there were a half-dozen or so people who were laughing last week anytime Jason bashed somebody's head in or bore through them with his machete.
Sigh. To each his own.
Hollywood Ending is rated PG-13 for sex-related humor.
As with most of Woody Allen's scripts, the guy rarely relies on profanity
to get a laugh. Bravo!
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