How does Woody Allen handle the challenge of TV, with its freedoms and healthy budget? By taking an old feature script, stretching it over six 22-minute episodes, and filming what seems to be the first draft.
The central idea is fine - hippy radical comes to stay with uptight old Jewish couple during the late 60s and causes mayhem. It's not terribly fresh - it was old in the 60s- but it's a solid conflict for a comedy, and Allen had mined some of this area before with Bananas.
And this has pleasures of latter day Woody Allen - it's nicely shot in pleasant apartments, the quality of actors are high. Some of it is funny, such as the old biddy book club reading Mao. I started thinking while watching this - the mind drifted - that Woody Allen films are kind of like Westerns for his fans: you know with even the worse ones you'll get at least a few stock things, only instead of punch ups at the saloon and a shoot out and horses, it'll be decent production values and some jokes and some semblance of a story.
Miley Cyrus is fine as the hippy; she's the stock young woman Allen character - loud, opinionated, trouble making, sexually experimental. Don't worry Woody doesn't sleep with her - the Woody surrogate does though.
Some opportunities missed: I actually would've liked to have seen a tale of Woody in the late 60s, when he was becoming super famous (I guess we did see that in Annie Hall)... he doesn't seem to have much affinity for the period. I wish he'd used the opportunity to make TV to do something really interesting - like, I don't know, some super serious and depressing Bergman dramas or something.
Allen is quite old now, and it's slowing down the delivery of his lines. So too for Elaine May - though at least she's an age appropriate love interest. It passes the time I guess, when watched out of the corner of the eye. I'm so glad I didn't see it in a cinema.
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