Presto-change-o

>> Woody Allen falls under Helen Hunt's spell in The Curse of the Jade Scorpion

by JASON BOGDANERIS

What's with big name directors and Helen Hunt? Ever since she took the Oscar for that crappy As Good as It Gets they've been flocking in droves to cast her--in Cast Away, Dr. T and the Women, Pay it Forward, What Women Want, and now, Woody Allen's latest, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. It's too bad, because what could be an enjoyable romantic comedy becomes more of a guessing game. I mean, you could maybe see why Mimi Leder would've cast her; Hunt's cloying earnestness kind of befit Pay it Forward's smug moralizing. But Woody Allen? Aren't his movies supposed to be well cast?

It's all the more annoying because, technically, Hunt doesn't give a bad performance in Scorpion. She's perfectly competent. It's just that she gives the exact same performance that she does in every movie: the no-nonsense woman who teaches the selfish/wounded/womanizing male lead a thing or two. In Scorpion, set in 1940, she's an efficiency expert called in to organize an insurance company's office after the company's president passes away. Allen's an investigator there, a boozy, chauvinistic hotshot who solves all the tough cases with the help of his connections on the street. Naturally, he's threatened by her presence, and they come to hate each other quickly. If you've ever seen a romcom before you might be able to guess where this is going.

The movie's good stuff kicks in when they're both hypnotized by a nightclub magician, who gets them under his spell whenever he says a magic word--"Constantinople" to Allen, "Madagascar" to Hunt. The catch is they remain vulnerable even after they leave the nightclub, with the magician calling them up, sending them into a trance, and getting them to rob the lavish estates their insurance company covers. This actually makes for some funny business, what with all the snapping in out of trances and hypnotized declarations of love that follow.

While even without Hunt The Curse of the Jade Scorpion wouldn't have been great, it might have been an amusing little trifle, a decent jab at a '40s-style comedy, though certainly far from Allen's best. As such, though, the movie just doesn't really hold up. Hunt's annoying style and the movie's general mediocrity make it a bit of a disappointment.

The Curse of the Jade Scorpion opens Friday, Aug. 24