A weird sort of vomit of a movie - all sorts of ideas and bits thrown cobbled together with the unifying device of Woody playing an author who drives north to accept an award. You can't help think at times he's just gotten together left over bits from other films - I know for a fact the scene in Hell was used in an early draft of Annie Hall - but it does have a sort of point, i.e. the importance of an artist using real life in his work and how it the work is often better than real life.
The ending is surprisingly moving; the stuff about Woody making caricatures of other people then somehow making up for it by having characters call on him making them caricatures during the movie beginning to get a little tired (David Williamson uses the same tactic).
The cast is another one of Allen's all star efforts but everyone suits their roles, from a young Jennifer Garner in the elevator to hilarious Kirstie Alley and Judy Davis as shrews, Tobey Maguire as a young Woody.
One clunky bit was Elisabeth Shue: I know the point was she's young, but she's a bit too young and beautiful for Woody who was starting to look a bit old by now. (This was during that period in Woody's films that he seemed unable to act unless it was opposite a younger co-star: from the time of Husbands and Wives [when the Soo Yi stuff broke] until the present, he played against someone his own age in Manhattan Murder Mystery and Small Time Crooks but against an ingenue in Mighty Aphrodite, Everyone Says I Love You, this one, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, and Hollywood Ending.)
It might have been better with Dustin Hoffman in the lead, maybe Elliot Gould. Still, for all its flaws, this is a film that has some meat on its bones, and that's something you couldn't really say about any of Woody's films for around the next decade.
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