Charm offensive

Larry David enables Woody Allen’s slight
return to form in Whatever Works

GOOD GRIEF: Evan Rachel Wood and David

by MALCOLM FRASER

The choice of Larry David in a lead role shows one of Woody Allen’s few consistent strong points—his flair for casting. Playing a sort of amalgam of the typical Woody protagonist and his Curb Your Enthusiasm persona, David brings life to the latest Allen comedy, Whatever Works. It’s kind of a diabolically clever move, allowing Allen to reintroduce yet another smart, cynical, wisecracking hypochondriac, but this one filtered through David’s comic skills for a fresh angle.

David plays Boris Yellnikoff, a bitter and misanthropic physicist who spends his time ranting about the decline of civilization and the meaninglessness of life. One evening, a runaway Southern teen (Evan Rachel Wood) pops into his life, charming her way into his apartment and turning his life upside down. Things get complicated further when her Christian-right mother (Patricia Clarkson) lands like a meteorite in David’s genteel Manhattan social circle.

David is pretty damn hilarious, spewing five-dollar words as he bemoans the idiocy of the entire human species. Wood is charming and funny, but her role is a feminist’s worst nightmare, and points to a frustrating theme through Allen’s career—his obsession with the notion of extremely young, beautiful and vapid girls falling in love with high-maintenance, hyper-intelligent older men. Even his neo-vaudevillian gag routines have aged better than his sexual politics. And from a filmmaking perspective, you can’t help but wish he would ease up on the prolific, fast-working style and tighten up some loose ends—like in many of his later films, the pace often feels rushed and sloppy.

Some have called Whatever Works a return to form for Allen. But I don’t want to overstate the case, or fall into the critic’s trap of over-praising one of his recent films because it’s not as bad as Anything Else or The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. It’s more like a return to the post-scandal, pre-slump era of decent, fluffy comedy (Bullets Over Broadway, Mighty Aphrodite) than to the level of his best work. That said, certainly the high-bobo New York setting feels like comfortable territory for him, and if you’re a fan, it is like visiting a grumpy, funny old uncle on one of his good days.

WHATEVER WORKS OPENS THIS
FRIDAY, JUNE 26