I am kind of fascinated by the late Woody Allen movies that are completely nihilistic.
Match Point was a thriller in that mode, but this film is ostensibly a comedy. A nihilistic comedy in which the final message seems to be that the only potentially happy character in the bunch of neurotic Londoners is an alcoholic old woman who has come to believe in reincarnation, her disillusionment allowing her to deal with her unhappy day-to-day. This is a bleak bleak film, but the dialogue was pretty sharp and the acting was particularly good. Both Gemma Jones and Anthony Hopkins were excellent as a divorced older couple, each desperate to find something to get them through old age, but I was particularly taken with Naomi Watts as their only daughter. She has a chilling final scene where she turns on her mother.
Still, none of this is exactly new territory for Woody Allen and some of the dialogue will be familiar from other films. The question is: if you've seen every Woody Allen film before can you stomach another one about neurotic city dwellers desperate for love? And if you haven't seen every Woody Allen films then why would you choose this one over, say,
Radio Days or
Manhattan or even
Midnight in Paris?
One last thing: I know that Josh Brolin is playing a narcissistic talentless writer but he does he really deserve that haircut (see below), and in what universe would he be able to seduce Freida Pinto?
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