Woody Allen has come to Plymouth, with Whatever Works, which is showing at Plimoth Cinema from Aug. 14 through Aug. 27.
But what should we expect this time?
Some people love Allen; others don’t. He’s created some of the funniest and most innovative comedy of our time and has known both success and failure.
While Allen is not all things to all people (perhaps he’s more of an acquired taste), his iconic reputation does win him big audiences, famous actors who want to work for him, and distributors who sign up for guaranteed profit with little risk.
Allen is known for pseudo-intellectual self-parody and for creating a uniquely Allen genre – neurotic romantic comedy.
Fourteen of Allen’s films have earned Oscar nominations, but he’s written more than 60 films and directed 40. To those who point out his failures, he says, “If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.”
Among his many character types, Allen has frequently employed the nebbish neurotic and the misanthrope. Of course, we have come to identify Allen, himself, as the neurotic New Yorker. The lead character in Whatever Works can certainly be described as a misanthrope, one who dislikes or distrusts all people. It clearly fits Boris Yellnikoff, played by Allen surrogate Larry David (Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld), who, in this film, elevates misanthropy to the splenetic.
Though Allen wrote the screenplay years ago for Zero Mostel, David’s pessimist TV persona made him a most likely choice for the role. David himself will provide a big draw for this film.
David plays elderly over-the-top grouch Boris Yellnikoff (there are a number of over-the-tops in the film). A former quantum physics professor, Boris lives in a shabby Chinatown walk-up in New York. He encounters a very young and very naive run-away southern beauty queen named Melodie (played with an accentuated Southern accent by Evan Rachel Wood),who is looking for a place to stay. Indulging in geriatric male fantasy, as only Allen can, he brings two characters with vast age differences together in a relationship and, eventually, to marriage. Perhaps wishing that young women would find him attractive is an Allen thing. (He’s 46 years older than his wife Soon-Yi.)
Boris, a legend in his own mind, earns a few dollars teaching children to play chess while insulting them as morons. He hangs around with friends grousing about humanity’s inadequacies. Melodie is enamored with his over-confident intellectualism.
