Tuesday, November 8, 2011

#35 Annie Hall (1977)


Plot summary (with spoilers): Alvy Singer is a neurotic stand-up comedian of indeterminate religious background who lives in New York City. He talks to the camera, and has many grievances about his life. He tells us that he recently broke up with Annie Hall, the most fetching boy-woman in all of New York. He starts by telling us how he grew up under a roller coaster in Coney Island and then admits he exaggerates and sometimes can't tell what's real. In line at the movies, Alvy fumes at the bloviating pontificating man behind him and fantasizes about confronting him. He remembers when he first met Annie, at a tennis match with friends. She hit on him clumsily, then drove him to her apartment. They hung out on the rooftop, and Alvy pontificated about art and worried she could see he didn't know what he was talking about, and she worried he would think she was too superficial. Eventually, they fell in love. He encouraged her to pursue her dream to be a singer, and she in turn tolerated his incessant whining. She took him on a virtual tour of her past boyfriends, whom they viewed invisibly in the same way Scrooge and the Ghosts look on past events. He then took her on a tour of his childhood, and his screeching Constanza-esq parents. He complains that she always wants to smoke pot first before sex. I would've required something significantly stronger. They break up and then make up and declare their love to each other on the boardwalk.
One day, Annie finally decides to take Alvy home to meet her family. Her parents are WASP-y and cold, her grandmother a racist, and her brother is super weird and awesome. He delivers a movie-stopping hilarious monologue about how sometimes he has an undeniable urge to swerve into oncoming traffic, while Alvy looks on in agony. All I can say is, I envy the 1977 audiences who got to be introduced the beautifully bizarre Christopher Walken this way.
(Okay, would Being Christopher Walken have been an even better movie than Being John Malkovich? Discuss.)
Annie becomes a popular night club singer, and some people invite her to see some agents in Los Angeles. They both go, and Alvy whines about how it's hot and sunny in December and how everyone drives everywhere and there's no culture. He's exactly right, of course. Except the sunny part is awesome. Of course, I romanticize New York City based on my eleven days there in 1999, and sit in two hours of traffic everyday in Los Angeles in 2011, so I can't really be trusted to be objective.
By the end of the trip, Annie has made new friends while Alvy has sulked and so she wants to live there. They agree to break up again, quite amicably.
But very quickly, shocker of shockers, Alvy decides he's miserable again, and wants her back. He flies to Los Angeles. He rents a car. He goes to a restaurant and orders wheat grass, because those stupid hippies in L.A. eat nothing but, and when Annie arrives for a friendly lunch, he begs her to come back. But she won't, because he's so damn miserable and physically nauseating. (She doesn't actually say that last part).
He goes back to New York, and writes a play about his relationship with her, but in the play, she leaves California and goes back with him to New York.
Then sometime later, he does find her in New York. She's moved back. They have a friendly, bittersweet lunch and then hug and part ways.
And then my review goes up one star because of this final monologue:
"I thought of that old joke, you know...this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, "Doc, my brother's crazy, he thinks he's a chicken", and the psychiatrist says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?", and the guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs". Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships, you know; they're totally irrational and crazy and absurd and...but I guess we keep going through it, because uh, most of us...need the eggs."



Review: Let me start by fully acknowledging that my review might be a tad biased based on my general dislike of Woody Allen due to his personal life and his myriad of endlessly crappy recent movies, most of which put him opposite increasingly hot women who would never speak to him in real life. I don't think it's possible for me to be 100% objective. That being said, I've heard this movie is a classic, and I went into watching it with an open a mind as possible. And...it wasn't bad. There are some beautiful patches of dialog, and that last monologue was fantastic, and Woody and Diane Keaton have tons of chemistry, but for me it just wasn't all that funny, ultimately. There's no question that Larry David modeled his Curb character very heavily on Woody's persona, and throughout this movie I tried to figure out why I find Larry so funny and Woody not nearly as much. I think it's because Woody's a victim, always whining about how the world is so cruel, and Larry actively tries to fix what he sees as life's great injustices, despite the fact that they're really life's pettiest inconveniences. Woody fantasizes about confronting the jerk in line at the movies, but Larry really would. Also, Larry's almost always right but lacks perspective and tact, while Woody just whines some more. Plus, Woody ruined those people's cocaine, and that's just wrong.

But it's not a bad movie. It's sweet, it's mildly funny, and it's only ninety minutes.

Stars: Three out of five.

Next, more mismatched lovers with "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", and then my man Jack is back in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest".





















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