This gets off to a great start, with Larry David ranting entertainingly at the audience with his hatred of life - it's not fresh material but David is a great Woody Allen surrogate, far more virile than Woody today and thus imposing. David carries the early stages of this film on his shoulders and while the comic Bergman rants about misery and death have been seen before, I was going with it.
Then Evan Rachel Wood's character turns up as a barely legal runaway who walks around his apartment in underwear and you get the sinking feeling "oh no this is going to be another May-December romance" and sure enough... she can't resist aging foreskin and throws herself at him, and he eventually caves. And what do you know the love of a woman young enough to be his granddaughter (I did the sums) rejuvenates David.
Once upon a time Woody Allen was capable of analysing generation gap romance with some insight and sharpness - Manhattan, Hannah and her Sisters and Husbands and Wives for instance. Then after he hooked up with Soo-Yi he seemed to become hooked on co-starring opposite love interests played by women at least half his age (Julia Roberts, Elisabeth Shue, Helen Hunt, Tea Leoni, Judy Davis), never critically or with any sort of fresh take. His fortunes as a filmmaker seem to have improved in recent years by (a) leaving New York and (b) having couples star opposite each other who are roughly the same age. This one breaks both rules.
And you know something it needn't have mattered had Allen done something interesting with an age gap romance - I'm sure twenty years with a much younger partner has provided him with some material, but we don't really get any of that here apart from the fact she is good with his panic attacks, carries viagra, and has different tastes. David's fling with Rachel Wood is just a good positive thing - she does wind up leaving him for a younger man but she's turned his life around, encouraged him to reconnect with the world... it's like Ingmar Bergman's sex comedies without the bite or the Barbara Hershey-Max Von Sydow subplot in Hannah with a feel good ending. Hate the world? Bang a 21 year old runaway - you'll feel better. Am I oversimplifying? I don't think so.
I know this is just my prejudice but it's how I feel and it's a shame because it's lazy, David is good, Patricia Clarkson is fun.
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