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Whatever Works (2009)

Director: Woody Allen

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11 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

Many actors have played the Woody Allen role in Woody Allen movies besides Woody Allen, and with mixed success: for every John Cusack in ‘Bullets Over Broadway’, there’s a Kenneth Branagh in ‘Celebrity’. In Allen’s latest film, ‘Whatever Works’, Larry David assumes the role of the sharply observant, neurotically indignant, endearingly curmudgeonly nebbish, and as casting it’s a qualified success: David brings a spiky sense of mischief that sidesteps the self-pity to which the role might tend, but he also remains so aloof from the action that it can be hard to engage emotionally with the character’s predicament.

A former Columbia University physicist and Nobel near-miss, Boris Yelnikoff (David) leaps from a window in despair at his comfortably futile existence but survives (‘you can’t win ’em all’). Before long, he’s shacked up downtown with Melody (Evan Rachel Wood), a ditzy waif from Mississippi whose artless wonder threatens to chip away at his ingrained misanthropy even as the caricatured types who arrive in her wake (including parents Ed Begley Jr and Patricia Clarkson) seem determined to confirm it.

‘Whatever Works’ is Allen’s first film set in his trademark location of Manhattan since 2004 and the tone is relaxed, even if Allen’s sense of the city, once so romantic, can feel as pantomimic as his takes on London and Barcelona. The broadness of the antic characters he sends to cross Boris’s path and the crises and reversals to which they fall subject are too exaggerated to engage as drama, and those who are uncomfortable with Allen’s tendency to pair nubile girls with ageing men will find little relief. But for all its wobbles, ‘Whatever Works’ is rooted in an agreeable sensibility: life favours fate over luck more than we’d like to think, so grab whatever chances of happiness come your way.

Author: Ben Walters

Time Out London Issue 2079: 24-30 June, 2010

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User reviews of this film

Oscar Valdez said...

Posted on Jul 04 2010 10:30 This is a very smart and well done film, so far the best released this year. It is sarcastic but funny, fantastic and yet realistic, not suitable for simple minds though.

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steve said...

Posted on Jun 30 2010 15:19 i think, Sophie, you have mixed up my crticism of the Time Out reviewer (ben - who is obviouly male) with my point regarding the reviwer Temi who walked out halfway through the film.. I assume temi is female. Frankly, I do not care whatsoever what the gender of any of the reviewers are - it has no impact on anything whatsoever.

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steve said...

Posted on Jun 30 2010 15:13 Dear Sophie, it is nothing to do with chauvinism (being gay I hardly think i am chauvinist). I assumed the reviwer was female because the only person I know called Temi is a female. If Temi the reviewer is male then the same points apply !! I do not believe that Woody is chauvinist at all. A female director could just as well have produced the same film so far as I am concerned. The film is totally open about all forms of relationships whether they are heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, monogamous, polygamous or whatever else you can think of! Personally I think it is great that there if a director around who can produce thought-provoking material which is also hilarious, witty and profoundly human. There are very few people who can do that. I am sick to death of going to watch the latest over-hyped 'action' or 'comedy' film only to have my senses battered by stupid stories, wooden acting, gratuitous violence and then read rave reviews.

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Sophie said...

Posted on Jun 30 2010 14:41 Steve is obviously suffering from the same bout of chauvinism that Woody Allen has contracted. The reviewer is male.

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Sutton said...

Posted on Jun 30 2010 13:58 This is an enjoyable film, with some funny and poignant moments. If you enjoy Curb Your Enthusiasm or Seinfeld, it’s definitely worth seeing. Larry David is good in the Woody Allen role. Well put DV.

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steve said...

Posted on Jun 27 2010 19:49 The Time Out reviewer has barely understood the film at all ! The film is not about fate and luck, it is a meditation on how to approach love and life and the complex psychology of relationships at play in modern society. This film concludes we should suspend our judgemental approach to relationships, sexuality and the pursuit of happiness, which is based on social conditioning underpinned by irrelevant and absurd notions often based on the idiocies of religious beliefs, and open our minds to accepting 'whatever works' instead. There are many laugh out lod moments in the film. However, you need to have a sense of the subtleties of wordplay and irony to really appreciate the depth of the humour. This is obviously absent in the reviewer who walked out half-way through. Maybe she should stick to having her sensibilites being bludgeoned by action/horror/vampire monies. In the end this is a deeply human film and a plea for tolerance and romanticism and the poetry of the soul and ignoring the materialstic conditioning foisted upon us by a world full of inhumanity. In other words, the same kind of themes as are in many of Woody Allen's films, but expressed via scintillating writing and wit that really works and has often not come off so well in many of his other films. This is a great film. This is Woody Allen back to his best.

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DV said...

Posted on Jun 25 2010 16:42 If you like Larry and you like Woody, check it out. Some very funny moments and a nice injection of Larry's onscreen character. Pretty, pretty, pretty good.

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Joanna said...

Posted on Jun 25 2010 11:03 I confess I haven't seen this, but if the trailer was anything to go by, I'll give it a miss. If that was supposed to be the best parts, and they weren't funny, what does it say for the rest?

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temi said...

Posted on Jun 24 2010 23:46 terrible movie. had to give up half way

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Flaco said...

Posted on Jun 24 2010 14:08 Clever and amusing, loved it

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anna said...

Posted on Mar 28 2010 14:30 i tnink this film is great. imo the reviewer did not get it, maybe he's too young and straight

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