Woody: The Movie

Movie director Pollack ("Tootsie") suddenly has a thriving new career in front of the camera. He's a natural as Jack, a rumpled bear learning to swing, and desperately trying to convince himself that his new affair is revitalizing him. Lysette Anthony turns what could have been a simple tofu-bimbo stereotype into a character both more avid and poignant. Neeson plays the uncomplicated, bewildered straight man in this den of emotional thieves, and plays him with a fine, abashed ardor.

Allen isn't easy on his women, and certainly not on Farrow's Judy, under whose sweet, pained brow lurks a cunning, passive-aggressive personality. She's never looked so stressed out, or been so unflatteringly photographed. Woody looks haunted and haggard. When his character confesses his attraction to "kamikaze women" who "crash their planes into you," it's phrased as a joke, but the delivery is pained. Though he gets off some wonderful one-liners, in this movie he tends to trust the funniest scenes to the other members of the cast.

It's not easy to watch Farrow and Allen in this film--not this year, anyway. There are simply too many eerie moments that temporarily throw you out of the movie. That's one of the burdens "Husbands and Wives" will just have to carry. If the movie, which is getting an uncharacteristically wide release this weekend, turns into Woody's biggest hit, you can be sure it won't be for the usual reasons. But funnily enough, it probably would have been his most popular comedy in ages had the media circus never happened: it's hard not to identify with these tangled, bungled affairs of the heart. If this movie "proves" anything, it's that Allen still knows better than most how to turn the demons of domesticity into edgy and hilarious art.

© 1992