In terms of movie-about-moviemaking cliches, it's all here-the pathetically untalented starlet, the money-minded producer, the bit player throwing herself at the director, the on-set bickering. The film's mileage is entirely dependent on goodwill for Allen himself, who seems to be taking gentle potshots at his own career. (In that respect, Hollywood Ending is similar to but way less cutting than the angry self-justification of Deconstructing Harry.) Val asks if the film can be shot in black and white, and is gently rebuffed. Val hires a Chinese director of photography, just as Allen himself did (Fei Zhao, who shot Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern, photographed Allen's Sweet and Lowdown, Small Time Crooks, and The Curse of the Jade Scorpion). And the film Val is making is such a Woody Allen fantasy project-a gangster movie set in New York during the 1940s-that it seems awfully anachronistic in the context of a movie about the machinations of contemporary Hollywood.

Hollywood Ending does return to a certain comfort level that the last few Allen films hadn't quite reached. Setlling into this one feels once again like being in the company of an old friend, albeit one who's grown a little forgetful and doddering with the years. His enduring distaste for punk rock seems irrelevantly conservative, his limp swipe at the video industry is misplaced and gratuitous, and his continued casting of himself against sexual interests 40 years his junior would seem ludicrous if we didn't know exactly how young Allen actually likes 'em. Still, there's something reassuring about watching Woody Allen mistake one of Tiffani-Amber Thiessen's breasts for a throw pillow. If you can't smile at that, perhaps the terrorists have already won.