Woody Allen has always been nostalgic and a sentimentalist, but only
lately has he seemed completely outdated. In the context of his recent
work, Hollywood Ending is something of a success-a mild
comedy about the movie industry with a few healthy laughs. Allen plays
Val Waxman, a temperemental has-been auteur who gets hired on a
potential comeback picture on the strength of lobbying inside the
studio by a former lover (Téa Leoni) who has since become engaged to a
studio exec. Naturally, many things go wrong.
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.
What’s most frustrating is the sense that Hollywood Ending could have
been quite a bit better than it actually is. At 114 minutes, it’s
decisively lacking in the brevity that used to characterize Allen’s
pictures-even the super-serious, Bergman-inspired stuff. Worse, his
timing seems to be off-the filmmaker who was once notorious for cutting
his films to the absolute bone now gives us rambling, overlong shots
featuring performers who almost seem to be ad libbing their dialogue. I
ran to the Internet Movie Database to investigate, and discovered what
may be the problem-Susan Morse is gone. Morse, the editor who had
worked with Allen since Manhattan in 1979 and who turned into a real
soldier by the time of the jazzy montage that characterized
Deconstructing Harry, was reportedly a victim of budget-cutting within
the ranks. (Since Sweet and Lowdown, his editor has been Alisa
Lepselter.)
Longtime cinematographer Carlo DiPalma and costume designer
Jeffrey Kurland have also vanished from the credit rolls. That’s too
bad-Allen may be a bona fide auteur, but like all films, his live or die
on the strength of the collaboration that brings them to life. Wouldn’t
it have been something if Allen had made a film about a movie director
who goes unexpectedly blind and then churns out a masterpiece anyway,
based on the craft and dedication of the crewmembers whom he takes for
granted, but who have always watched his back on a film-by-film basis? B-