Can you predict the plot of Whatever Works, the
900,000th movie from Woody Allen? If you guessed, “An older man gets
romantically involved with a much, much, much younger woman in a
contrived and kind of skeevy script,” you’re dead right. Fortunately,
Allen’s well-publicized personal life is apparent nowhere on the
screen, and Whatever Works spares us the characters’ nauseating
romance. In one scene, they’re disinterested in each other; in the
next, we’ve jumped forward in time, and the two are married. I don’t
even think we have to see them kiss. We should count our blessings.
By all accounts, the young girl in Whatever Works is not
inspired by Allen’s real-life child bride: The Woodster reportedly
wrote the script in the ’70s as a vehicle for Zero Mostel (long before
Soon-Yi was a twinkle in her adoptive papa’s eye), and when Mostel died
in 1977, the script was shelved. Until now, when Curb Your
Enthusiasm‘s Larry David took up Mostel’s role as Boris Yellnikoff,
a bitter misanthrope and self-proclaimed genius. One day Boris comes
home to find a runaway (Evan Rachel Wood) sleeping on his Manhattan
doorstep, and he reluctantly lets her stay at his place until she gets
on her feet.
To his credit, Allen has written some wonderful female characters
over the years—Annie Hall and Hannah’s sisters leap to
mind—but Wood’s Melodie St. Ann Celestine is not one of them.
Wood gamely tries to fill the role of ingénue, but the best
thing I can say about her is thank god she’s not Scarlett Johansson.
Boris is a little deeper—David’s dry delivery is occasionally
funny, but most of the time he’s just reciting lines in that shrill,
pinched growl of his, while affecting a bizarre limp (a tribute to
Mostel’s broad, mugging style of comedy that feels entirely out of
place).
Whatever Works could well be the title of Allen’s current
cinematic style. Like many of his recent films, it feels muted,
minimalist, and sometimes downright lazy: the camera stays static, the
lines are read, and boom, we’re on to the next scene. I’ve always had
the feeling that Allen’s best films were a matter of luck; his writing
and directorial approach is almost always the same, whether the movie
is good or bad. It’s a journeyman quality that has resulted in a few
wonderful films, and a huge amount of okay ones. In this case, just
going with whatever works isn’t quite enough.