Largely unreleased Stateside due to that Farrow Family Cabal you may have heard about, Woody Allen’s apparently antepenultimate film makes a belated appearance via MPI Media (who they?), but, unsurprisingly, proves hardly worth the wait. One of those wild & wooly weekend stories, here where an upstate Liberal Arts College couple (girl: MidWest naïf/boy Upper East Side scion) misplace each other and wind up having separate adventures all around Manhattan. HER: chasing an uncompromising film director for her college newspaper (really?) and just happening upon glam parties & possible flings. HIM: chasing romantic pleasures & echoes of decades past (he flaunts a cigarette holder!) and just happening upon glam parties & possible flings. You can see how this might have worked for Preston Sturges in his prime (heck, for Woody in his prime), but instead only managing the paradoxical trick of treading water and sinking like a stone. An AI Chatbot version of Woody Allen tropes & jokes. He’s become one of those old dray horses still pulling a delivery wagon but unable to change his routine, stopping by habit at long vacant addresses. What little fun there is comes from spotting which actors are able to take care of themselves under Allen’s late-stage laissez-faire direction (Selena Gomez; Cherry Jones) and which go down without a fight (Elle Fanning attempting to channel Goldie Hawn’s giddy glow; Jude Law missing his key light on a Gig Young fifth-wheel routine). As for young man-about-town Timothée Chalamet, he may be even too delicate for faux Noël Coward social comedy, but to his credit, doesn’t fall back on Allen mannerisms the way so many would-be Woodys have. (See Jason Biggs in ANYTHING ELSE/'03: https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/anything-else-2003.html . . . better yet, don't.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Once upon a time, in MANHATTAN/'79, Allen played this scene to a fare-the-well, underage girlfriend and all.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Note poster: No prob opening this over in Japan.
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