Woody Allen makes movies with the speed and precision of a short-order breakfast cook. Year after year, he churns out pancake after pancake for an undemanding diner crowd, with Café Society the 47th pancake he’s written and directed in roughly as many years. As pancakes go, it’s round and warm and tasty. It’s a pancake! What else were you expecting? Pour some syrup on it and eat up.
As a movie, though, Café Society is a little harder to rate. It shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone that it’s noticeably half-assed—it’s a Woody Allen movie. Half-assedness has practically become his trademark, particularly in his later years, as his workmanlike craftsmanship has devolved into outright laziness. Its efficiency and carelessness, though, can’t obliterate the easygoing, intrinsic charm that runs through the movie or the romantic wistfulness that pops out of the screen, even as the characters—especially the women—remain woefully two-dimensional. It’s a difficult movie to dislike, a quality it has in common with much of Allen’s work. (This quality is the reason the public at large has torn itself up over the disturbing allegations that have dogged Allen for years.)