A movie best watched late at night as you're dozing off - it's like a soothing cup of camomile tea. It's lovingly shot, with pleasing production design and attractive actors. And there's a story which clunks along, and old tunes and references to old actors like Ginger Rogers.
I'm not sure what the point of it is, or was. Maybe to do something set in Hollywood in the 1930s - but Woody Allen doesn't seem that interested in that time or place and hops back to New York fairly quickly. If I were trapped in a cinema watching this I'd have been annoyed but I wasn't so it was okay.
Pretty much everything in the film I'd seen in other Woody Allen films. Nebbish Jewish guy falls in love with a beautiful girl... who is secretly the mistress of an older man. Wacky Jewish family. Brother in law is a commie. Brother is a gangster. Nightclubs. Women who have sex with elder men.
The actor are fine - Jesse Eisenberg is fine, Kirsten Stewart is fine, Steve Carrell is fine, Blake Lively is fine. The costumes are lovely. Woody Allen's narration is a little slow.
Woody veers from drama - there's a subplot where the sister arranges for the brother to knock off an annoying neighbour. You think things will escalate - the neighbour's cronies will come after them, or Eisenberg will be implicated, or something. But nope. The brother is executed and that's it. I kept waiting for Parker Posey's character to do something - nope. For Blake Lively to get upset/leave Eisenberg - nope. For Carrell to go after Eisenberg - nope. To see the impact on Carrell's wife of Carrell leaving - nope.
Everyone gets richer. Personal dramas are limited. There aren't many consequences for actions - just like Woody's own life, I suppose.
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