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Visual:		7.0
Audio:		6.0
Acting:		8.0
Writing:		8.0
Score:		8.0

Director(s):	Woody Allen
Writer(s):	Woody Allen
Starring:	Evan Rachel Wood • Patricia Clarkson • Larry David • Ed Begley, Jr.
Genre:	Comedy
Release Date:	June 19, 2009
Rated:

Thirty years ago, Woody Allen wrote a script with the legendary Zero Mostel in mind to play the lead. After Mostel's untimely death in 1977, Allen threw the script into a drawer and never thought of trying it with another actor. The significance here is not that rumblings of a SAG strike prompted him to dust off the old script because he didn't have time to write a new one; it's that the film ends up vibing like Woody from that period, a time many would consider his prime.

I wouldn't say that Allen's writing has deteriorated over time, although it has diverted itself from the nebbish, philosophical and anecdotal style he's most known for. Whatever Works, written around the period of Allen making Annie Hall, is more in that mold than any of his recent works. Which is why it is both old hat and refreshing at the same time. There's a familiar sense to it, but one that feels comforting rather than overstaying its welcome. One can take comfort in the idea that there's a new Woody Allen movie that is this witty and consistently funny. This is the kind of Allen I like, if only because saying this is the kind of Woody I like sounds unsavory.

The main difference that makes this slightly new is the main character Boris Yelnikoff, played with great temperament by Larry David. Despite the easy label of it being yet another Woody Allen avatar, as Woody's main characters often share the same intellectual and misanthropic flair, it's actually quite hard to imagine Woody as Boris. What makes the character so endearing here, similar to Clint Eastwood's entertaining grunt as Walt Kowalski in Gran Torino, is his incurable grumpiness, often directed at those around him via a string of unprovoked insults. The characters Allen plays are often self-deprecating, not abusive. Here, most of the humor comes from watching Larry David losing his patience for the "sub-mental inchworms" he interacts with, including little kids he gets paid to teach chess to.

The supporting performances in this is wonderful, which isn't surprising from such a cast. While Larry David is just Larry David going through his usual moans, and that suits the character just fine, the real fun is Evan Rachel Wood's adorable turn as Melodie, the naive Southern gal who's run away into the big city to escape her overbearing small town parents. It's sweet and naive without being saccharine, and somehow the film manages to make her romantic relationship with Boris appear less objectionable than it should be. Patricia Clarkson and Ed Begley, Jr. are also comically terrific as Melodie's Bible-thumping parents.

Early in the film, Boris addresses the audience in a long monologue that, in short, claims that life is miserable and then you die, so anything you can do to get through it that doesn't hurt anybody else, go ahead and do it. Even bestiality. Quite a radical idea, and no doubt will spur comments about Allen's not-so-personal personal life, but makes sense coming from a misanthrope who cares only for himself. Allen's work has always had strokes of sexual liberation in them, but this, perhaps, is the most blatant endorsement of it; and with such a perfect slogan too: Whatever Works.

Allen once said that he never cared for depicting the New York he grew up with, the real New York, preferring to recreate the New York he saw in Hollywood movies. Whatever Works certainly aligns with that idea. It's a fantasy, and not just the old-man-marrying-a-young-sexpot kind of fantasy. It's an artsy liberal's fantasy, imagining New York as a cultural Eden and beacon of hope that would inspire those gun-toting Christian right-wing Southerners to change their foolish ways by re-examining their repressed sexuality. Yes, almost the perfect stereotypical insult. Of course, Allen doesn't spare the New Yorkers from his own fantasy, as well. Boris is an unpleasant depiction of an intellectual, and his bohemian friends, though they harbor positive changes in the Christians, are certainly not portrayed as appealing in their antiquated lifestyle.

In this age of massive political divide, where such stereotypes of the South feel so old, doesn't Woody feel outdated pushing for such portrayals? Or is this just a case of a script growing obsolete after three decades? But the obviously up-to-date joke about President Obama in the film suggests otherwise, that Woody does realize the age he lives in, and chooses to go for the cartoony portrayal instead, to highlight how absurd it is. Ultimately, Melodie doesn't grow by rejecting her Chirstian roots and accepting Boris' lefty-scientific-atheistic rants. She grows when she finally begins to think for herself. Whatever belief you subscribe to, it's all about discourse, right? Whatever works.