|
Showing all 37 reviews...
|
|
 |
I never though I would like this movie, but I did. Whatever Works is funny, quirky, and very much true. The main character has very insightful, hilarious opinions and all the acting is great. The ending is beyond cheesy though (but it's supposed to be that way,) and a wet noodle has a better personality than the British man that Melanie goes for. I liked it a lot.
7/10
11.9.2009 -
sweetblood,diabetic@ - age: 13-17
| | | | |
Larry David was great, like you would expect... but I must say Evan Rachel Wood was fantastic... overall a must see for smart people (no cretons or inchworms need see this movie)
9/10
24.8.2009 -
jeffk29@ - age: 36-49
I love almost all Woody Allen movies... :P This one is no exception. Such a great and funny movie!
10/10
14.8.2009 -
nemoway@ - age: 26-35
Every line Larry David utters, I hear Woody Allen. Allen may have wriiten some lines here that went beyond facetious/sarcastic into the realm of insulting, and that's too bad. Surprisingly, everyone in this film goes home happy. Not surprisingly, Patricia Clarkson again does a marvelous job.
6/10
7.8.2009 -
m,j,brown@ - age: 50+
| | | | |
It's a cobbled together Greatest Hits package of Woody's 'bits', but they don't quite fit together. Tell me if this sounds familiar: There's the older guy's intellectual angst as he falls for a much younger woman, there's a much younger woman inexplicably attracted to the older guy 'cause he's intellectual, there's the intellectual coffee shop musings between a bunch of intellectuals over the meaning of life, there's the main character sharing his intellectual musings with the audience. I've loved those elements in Woody's past films because they were fresh and powerful. So why not staple them together again, right? Well, for one, even though the New York Jewishy thing is entertaining, there are only so many ways you can whine effectively. Decades later, the iconic Woody Allen-esque voice is sounding a little strained. Larry David's a lousy actor, and a lousy Woody Allen impersonator. The talk-to-the-audience philosophy chat is more an angry lecture on stupid people than an ode to New York. And the romance between David and Evan Rachel Wood is... well... icky. Despite the protestations that 'she's too young', 'it'll never work', 'look how old I am', the display of another old/young plot point in a Woody Allen film is a sore spot only Woody's therapist can explain. Whatever Works is Woody dealing with age and mortality. A lot of anger and ego spills through the cracks of his comic delivery, like a man straining to find relief from pain. There are funny moments, but the film sounds like Woody's trying to laugh his way past the graveyard.
6/10
28.7.2009 -
lshap@ - age: 36-49
Well that's 2 hours of my life I won't get back! Painfully boring. People left part way through. My husband asked if I wanted to leave and we decided to persevere on the hope that it would get better. It didn't. The most exciting part of the movie was when I saw the credits come on in the end. I agree with the reviewer who said he wouldn't even rent this one.
4/10
26.7.2009 -
ellacjn@ - age: 50+
I didn't expect to like the Woody Allen movie but it was absolutely amazing. Loved the sense of humour. Larry David is a keeper. He made the movie completely.
10/10
21.7.2009 -
hovis@ - age: 50+
Excellent - I started laughing half way through and kept laughing until the end. A must see.
9/10
21.7.2009 -
maggie429@ - age: 50+
It is a superb film, very unique, more than realistic, very entertaining,
9/10
20.7.2009 -
bleuerotto@ - age: 50+
If you don't love Woody Allen's style skip this movie. You must be a fan to like it. The neurosis, the intellectual snobbery, the supposed insight into life is delivered with great low key humour. I loved it.
9/10
19.7.2009 -
ildiko,t@ - age: 50+
Funny, different, ok acting and a perspective you may or may not agree with. Worth a look.
6/10
19.7.2009 -
michjulien@ - age: 36-49
| | | | |
Outstanding, brilliant and insightful portrail of character actors. Woody Allen at his best.
10/10
18.7.2009 -
tutorgal22@ - age: 36-49
Awesome. Huge woody fan!!! Brilliant!!! No more words are necessary. This is a brillian film, as is Woody Allen.
10/10
17.7.2009 -
bubaloo@
It gets really funny about half way through. You have to get that sort of character to really it enjoy it though. I can see why a few would it hate it!
9/10
17.7.2009 -
dream_67@ - age: 26-35
Woody Allen is getting better and better! His story here is genius. Simplicity and effectiveness! What a great film! Go see it! It's a fun ride!
10/10
16.7.2009 -
tomas34@ - age: 26-35
Okay movie. The laughs were there, and some decent writing was there as well. I enjoyed the characters being hyperbolized archtypes. Over the top distillations of character traits, so it was fun to see such powerfully one-dimensional (not in an uncreative way, in a good way) characters mix, and the absurd situations that naturally result. Enjoyable to watch, but probably won't remember it a year from now.
6/10
16.7.2009 -
snakesaucy@ - age: 26-35
If you know and love Larry David and used to love Woody Allen's funnier days... than you will LOVE THIS MOVIE!!! My face hurts because I was SMILING THROUGHOUT this film... the rest of the time I was laughing! Finally Woody is back with a great comedy! I will be seeing this over and over! I LOVE LARRY DAVID!
10/10
15.7.2009 -
alexandre,bergeron@ - age: 36-49
I rate 'Whatever Works' a 'nine' for fans of Woody Allen - it's a must see. This is first rate 'Woody' in that his jokes are witty and biting and Larry David does a wonderful job in delivery - in fact I think Larry David was perfect for his role. Larry David (Boris) personifies what I consider to be the main theme of this picture; that we live in a cold and indifferent universe with nothing to look forward to after we die. Within this theme Mr. Allen creates a lovely story and some truly funny situations which aptly demonstrate it is up to us to make the world and our time here as happy and satisfying as possible, and we do that by being there for each other in 'whatever (way) works' for ourselves and those around us. Truly a pure delight!!
9/10
14.7.2009 -
rpmail@ - age: 36-49
| | | | |
I must admit the first half was slow moving and I was going to walk out but I held out and was glad that I did. The 2nd half was alot of fun. That was when the Patricia Clarkson character was introduced. Too bad she wasn't there from the beginning. The Larry David character was annoying. Not Woody Allen's best but not his worst either.
6/10
14.7.2009 -
ysusan@ - age: 50+
| | | | |
[ATTENTION: This review reveals content of the movie.]
I wanted to see this film, not only because I am a fan of Woody Allen, (I loved Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Scoop and Anything Else) but also because one reviewer said it made him want to go to New York City. So, I was envisioning really amazing scenes of New York. I suppose there were a few but they were quickly overshadowed by the awfulness of the film! I’ll admit it – I left half way through. The audience roared with laughter but I thought the jokes were pretty pathetic. (How many times can Larry David call someone an ‘inchworm’ and still be funny? ) For some reason, in his other films, the clichés work (example, the rich, post-graduate girls in Vicky Cristina and their fairytale version of Barcelona) but here the clichés just fell completely flat. Allen wasn’t doing anything clever with them. Larry David’s ‘genius’ character was more embarrassing. As for the love interest – the age gap didn’t bother me – it was more that a twenty-something woman acted like she was developmentally challenged and it was kind of icky that a supposed genius would be with someone who had the mental capacity of a 7 year-old. There was something off in the pacing of the film – it felt too staged and not natural enough. I think this is because Larry David doesn’t use a script for Curb Your Enthusiasm – maybe the use of script in this film caused the hollow, flat feeling. Too bad, as I was really looking forward to this. I wouldn’t even recommend this as a rental.
2/10
13.7.2009 -
jiffy_popper@ - age: 26-35
An intelligent, perceptive film. Well worth seeing. Avoid if you are into mainstream action films.
9/10
9.7.2009 -
rtm@ - age: 36-49
Why is it that the negative critiques are always so inflated and longer than the movies themselves. If you like woody go and see the movie - it will give you something to talk about one way or the other...
7/10
9.7.2009 -
vanmonkey68@ - age: 36-49
Go see it! It is actually better than it looks and very refreshing compare to other Woody Allen movies! You won't regret it I promise and you'll have a good time!
8/10
8.7.2009 -
ginibean2000@ - age: 26-35
| | | | |
If I taught a course in cinema studies I would use this film. The ways that it is a bad movie can reveal more about genres and authors than such great film as "Battleship Potempkin," "Modern Times" and "Triumph of the Will". Who can deny that Woody Allen has made some very bad movies. Having captured the essence of his own neurosis in Annie Hall, he has repackaged it in a series of mediocre similitudes. What can it mean that he still gets an audience -- only that his cultivated neurosis no longer functions as a mirror into Woody, rather it mirrors the audience to itself. Faux intellectuals, congratulating themselves for their lack of commitment to any of the genuine rigors of learning -- a self-professed genius whose only evidence of genius is his announcement of an IQ if 200! And is he the only soul free champion of the svelte class? Certainly not. Philosophers who speak like cliches, but say nothing of significance. Artists who talk about art stylishly yet soulessly; and, most important, lovers who conceive of love as a passion rather than as a virtue -- who consequently follow the trail of idle sentiment. This among the intellectual class? Try reading a book like Four cardinal Virtues by Josef Pieper and you will see that a volume readable by 18 year olds has more insight than any of the characters in this film with regard to the challenge of the human condition. And how is this challenge characterized in a manner not characterized by Allen in ten other films such as "Scenes from a Mall" -- as the main character of this film cries out, imitating either Joseph Conrad' Kurtz or Polansky's "The horror... the horror!" Such references are supposed to be the evidence of genius, but one can find this level of literary awareness in a passionate 17 year old. Apparently Woody's intellectual-literary depth never got much further than his moral-emotional. The movie is Allenesque, which is to say it is nothing at all. It reminds me of those latter day artists writing spin offs of Checkhov and Shakespeare -- they don't seem to understand that both they and their culture lack the spiritual depth that can inspire the motives of their sources. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery -- we also see that it is the most blatant form of incompetence. It is very sad that Larry David took on this role. Sad, but useful for my imaginary lecture to a cinema class. Jason Alexander has stated more than once that he first performed the role of George Costanza by channeling Woody Allen. It was not long however before he realized that the person to channel was not Woody Allen but the shows actual writer who lived many of the experiences in the series, like the raisins episode. Alexander says that that was when the character takes hold. It seems to me that Larry David represent a completely new generation, a transformed expression of Jewish ethos in comedy. While Allen is often credited as the American jew who first introduced a particular form of neurotic and vulnerable Jewish identity into cinema (e.g., in Annie Hall," Well I know he's anti-semitic because when I asked him if he had lunch he said, 'No, D'jou, d'jou? Get it? He didn't say 'No, have you? He said D'Jou!" That identity seems to have worn out, and the attempt to resuscitate it by bringing in the generation of humor that follows it, best represented by Larry David (confident to the point of arrogance, totally unaware of his environment, more of a social moron/genius than a neurotic -- watch CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM: that effort to renew the Woody Allen ethos by having it played by Larry David, is a profound failure. Whether it is in camera asides, metaphysical speculations, or falling in love with adolescents, David always appears to be wearing shoes three sizes too small. His feet are unable to breathe in them, and neither can his soul in the role. Watch the film with foreknowledge of the Alexander story and you will learn a lot about what ruins a movie, what it means for artistic form to become moribund, and what happens to a literary figure who ceases to grow, or whose vision is surpassed by others, Having a comic genius like David stand in for Allen only weakens the film. Allen, with his profound performative insecurities and diminutive style does a much better job of putting an innocent face on pedophilia. Finally all literary forms are guided by moral presuppositions. In this film, the presupposition is the postmodern rally of Michel Foucault -- live at the edge. Foucault was a great player in the California bath houses after the AIDS epidemic began. His game was multiple partners also S&M. His rationale: "To die for the love of boys -- what could be more beautiful." And thus is to be expected that he contracted AIDS and died. This is a man who seriously discusses whether sex with twelve year olds is acceptable if the child initiate. He concludes that it is too weighty an issue for the State to permit. Readers do not seem to have grasped the intention of the statement -- it was not to question the legitimacy of that sort of activity, it was to live in the question as if it were open to being a question -- in other words, it functioned in a manner that allowed the author to meditate before his audience on the legitimacy of the pedophillic act in other words, as the title of this film announces "WHATEVER WORKS". This is indeed the message of the film when the main character asides to the audience that you should take love where and however you find it. In a sense I would agree, but this is a shallow version of love: love that is comfortable with adultery, the seduction of married women (with the aid of an interfering mother) the combinations of threes, gender role reversals -- all this understood as therapeutic."Whatever Works" is not a tribute to love -- it is an homage to desire. Sadly, since Aristotle it has been argued that love is not a mere desire, rather love is a virtue. Passions blow whither and thither. In doing so they tear lives apart. Virtues restrain the passions for the sake of proper fellowship with others. They acknowledge and cultivate the pleasures of love, but only within a dialectical tension that also shows some respect to the notion of duty. This is a film that congratulates what is weakest in humanity. Only one other reviewer has seen that so far because only one other reviewer has thought deep enough about ownmost humanity (although I congratulate any reviewer who dislikes it) All do suffer, but those who take up a morality like the one championed in this film suffer both needlessly and uselessly. They suffer because they have been told to glorify in the very things that satisfy short term whims while destroying everything that is built through time, every form of duration that cannot exist without a sense of duty. Were you hurt by your parents splitting up? If you were, then you should not gain pleasure from a film that champions the whimsical pursuit of other people's pretty faces and their genitals. Your very life is the evidence of the inadequacy of the film's message. A divorce rate so high as currently exists does not signal a mere crisis in marriage -- it signals the end of the root structure from which social order has been achieved: this point mentioned by Aristotle by page three of the Politics ("The origins of the polity are in the family.") The family as a structure that persists in time makes possible other structures that exist in time, larger institutions. Thus it is an open question whether the complexities of modern society can survive such efforts to champion the rejection of those characteristics understood as the social backbone since Aristotle. Someone commented to an earlier excellent review that the reviewer should simply have give it a nod or a boot -- that this is not the context for high falluttin analysis! This is a grossly irresponsible attitude to oneself and one's culture. Cinema plays a cultural role -- it puts before us events that are underwritten by latent moral principles. Watching such films implies acceptance (hence one reviewer says he saw five people walk out) But failing to look critically at them is even worse. If they are moral texts, than they must be examined for their moral significance. To do otherwise is to suck on a tit that yields sour milk.
2/10
8.7.2009 -
com2013@ - age: 13-17
I am a fan of Woody Allen, I will go and see all his movies. Felt that Woody was going through a routine in the scenario and events, I do not like Larry David's character (Curb your Enthusiasm) it's overplayed, annoying, but luckily there are other characters who are playful and amusing, with some real hilarious scenes.
6/10
7.7.2009 -
reneefran@ - age: 50+
| | | | |
I watched 5 people walk out of this movie less than half way through. I was determined to hold out, and did get a couple of good belly laughs thanks to Larry David. But this was strangely edited, questionably acted, typically uncomfortable lolita-esque creepy Woody Allen movie. I was so surprised considering the ratings it had received on this site. Did I (and those other 5 people) miss something?!
4/10
7.7.2009 -
harmonytree@ - age: 36-49
| | | | |
[ATTENTION: This review reveals content of the movie.]
Brilliant. Disillusioned with mankind? Look around you and see a bunch of humanoids suffering mass hypnosis? Feel like you are one of the few that really sees the preposterousness of it all? Has your lucidity and grasp of reality rendered you a cynic or 'pessimistic realist? '. If you see beyond the script and the conditioned reality we were born into you'll relate to David's character. There is a certain existential angst that stems from seeing the 'big picture'- he pulls it off swimmingly. Full of wit and sarcasm this one is sure to offer a refreshing sense of relatability. (one part I found quite smart was when he comes downstairs in the throes of a panic attack and she suggests putting on a movie. She thumbs through some choices while he describes his unpleasant experience stating 'i saw the abyss' and she, none the wiser, innocently replies 'well, we'll watch something else then'. fantastic. Hardly anyone laughed though... odd.
9/10
7.7.2009 -
oscart@ - age: 36-49
Great film. Although the screenplay was written in the 1980's, Woody's back and he's awesome. This is a ridiculously hilarious film and Larry David is perfect as Woody Allen's alter ego.
8/10
5.7.2009 -
gaiderdraco@ - age: 26-35
One of the best film's I've seen in the last decade.
10/10
3.7.2009 -
viga,drozd@ - age: 18-25
Okay, so I agree. A classic Woody movie, very watchable. However, is it just me or did Woody make it too simple. It seems that in previous movies the message and delivery was more subtle, the audience needed to make the connections. In this one there's no fun in decoding the point... Woody just hammers us with the message. Annie Hall seemed to be more clever.
7/10
2.7.2009 -
sheavz@ - age: 50+
Classic Woody Allen. Larry David makes a perfect stand in for Woody. There's a good in just about every line from the characters. And yeah, audience clapping at the end of the movie. Last time I saw this was when I first saw Schindler's List!!
8/10
30.6.2009 -
perkinsguy@ - age: 36-49
| | | | |
As an analyst I am accustomed to listening patiently (at length) to narcissistic, self-promoting monologues. Narcissism is a complex developmental challenge in our culture and a gateway to great creativity, if one works through its stuckness, the bitterness this creates, and the enraged envy and self-hatred at its core. That is what this film is all about. How to create new patterns of relationship that enable narcissistic transformation? Woody suggests some clues in a snide way, and finally works up to the realization that developing a sort of quirky empathy is the catalyst for progress. But real empathy is not self-deprecating, crude or cynical: it is an experience of relatedness that leads one to feeling deeply understood without being judged, and therefore accepted in a way that mirrors our (longed for) sense of perfection and being admired. Transformation gradually unfolds from there through this experience. We all need mirroring at every stage of life. Mature adults earn this mirroring through merit for achievement, especially in self-less serve to others. Unfortunately, Larry David, as Woody's stand-in, spends much of the film in an infantile mode demanding, 'Mommy, Daddy, watch me, watch me! ' He becomes quite brittle and tiresome because Woody has yet to realize that the oscillation between autonomy and neediness arises from an ancient, crippling paradox. This was summarized long ago by the Roman poet Ovid in 'Metamorphosis' by the phrase, 'Touch me not, I'll give you no power o'er me.' Hopefully, the resolution of this will start to emerge in Woody's next film. Because this grandiose, exhibitionistic monologue does not touch one on any level, other than as a yet another mask for the auteur's low self-esteem. Admittedly, the film does prompt a snicker or two, but it's long-past time for the fiddler to learn a new tune.
5/10
29.6.2009 -
iispiral@ - age: 50+
Good acting, very funny, audience clapping at end of movie, when did you last hear that?
8/10
29.6.2009 -
barbara,watson@ - age: 50+
Very engaging and entertaining film. Definitely one of Allen's best and a great lesson for us all to learn.
9/10
29.6.2009 -
michael,ratcliffe@ - age: 50+
| | | | |
The entire audience watched with rapt attention laughing our heads off in many places at this most Woodyesque of films. What a delight! Do whatever it takes to see Whatever Works. You'll be glad you did as I am.
10/10
28.6.2009 -
hajwhitney@ - age: 50+
| | | | |
A classic Woody Allen, great casting choice in picking Larry David for the role. A great movie for any Allen fan!
9/10
27.6.2009 -
j_farrell79@ - age: 26-35
One Of Woody Allen's best comedies in years! If you dig Seinfeld/Curb Your Enthusiasm or Larry David and Woody Allen you'll love this amazing flick.
9/10
24.6.2009 -
kolchak@ - age: 26-35
|
