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Hooray for 'Hollywood Ending'
[Photo: DreamWorks Pictures]
Woody Allen, Tea Leoni and Debra Messing, right, star in Hollywood Ending. Allen plays a filmmaker who sounds much like himself: a temperamental, hypochondriacal perfectionist. |
By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published May 2, 2002
Funny thing about Woody Allen's latest film: It delivers the laughs his most recent work has lacked.
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I heard something at Monday night's screening of Hollywood Ending that I never thought I'd hear again: The roar of a packed audience laughing at a Woody Allen movie. First of all, his films don't play to full houses anymore unless it's a free screening like this one. And laughing long and loud at Woody Allen has been a rarity for nearly two decades.
Allen never stopped being chuckle-funny, amusing fans through familiar riffs and arcane punchlines. Often his most recent films seemed funnier on first viewing than they actually were, simply because viewers were reaching for something, anything to prove Allen hadn't lost his comedic touch. Last year's wan effort, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, indicated that he had.
Now comes Hollywood Ending, a title that sounded (some hoped) like Allen's swan song when first announced. After seeing the movie, you'll be glad that his next project starts rolling in two weeks. Allen has rediscovered his silly side without sacrificing the urbane wit and inside jokes. Hollywood Ending is his most satisfying pure comedy since Broadway Danny Rose, and that's been a long, long time.
The movie begins in a movie studio boardroom where executives are discussing a filmmaker who sounds a little like Woody Allen: a temperamental, hypochondriac perfectionist with a vaguely lascivious past. The subject is Val Waxman (played by Allen to further blur the reality check), a formerly promising filmmaker resorting to deodorant commercials in arctic conditions and fretting about whether moose are carnivorous. Val is all past, no future, but his feel for New York City might be just what the studio's next project needs.
That's what Ellie (Tea Leoni) believes. Ellie is Val's ex-wife and she still has feelings for him, which doesn't sit well with the studio chief -- and Ellie's fiance -- Hal Yeager (Treat Williams). Hal relents, giving Val a chance to work again, and regrets it immediately. The first half of Hollywood Ending is filled with potshots at Tinsel Town culture, some of which may require a subscription to Variety to understand. If you can't find the joke in a contract perk calling for "a tenth of a point after quadruple break-even" or a lifetime achievement award for Haley Joel Osment, Hollywood Ending has enough mainstream vitality to urge interest.
But those industry gags still only get part of the audience laughing. The group dynamic comes when Val's stress results in psychosomatic blindness, a condition that the script suggests makes him as good as any Hollywood filmmaker. Sightlessness leads to juicy sight gags as Val fakes his way through production with only a Chinese interpreter and Ellie aware of his situation, acting like his guide dogs.
That's the outline of Hollywood Ending, but it doesn't come close to describing the texture, variety and sheer density of the humor. Allen reminds us that before Airplane! there was Bananas. Allen backs off the crudity of Deconstructing Harry to find his mildly naughty muse again, especially in a seduction scene with a starlet (Tiffani Thiessen) and the ditzy allure of Val's girlfriend Lori (Debra Messing), so concerned with her figure that she wears ankle weights all day. The studio satire is sharp but not savage; after all, Allen doesn't have much of an ax to grind with people who haven't bothered him much professionally. His main beef about L.A., as usual, is that it isn't New York.
The ensemble cast is strong, with better-crafted material than Allen has produced in years. Leoni cuts an imposing figure with just the right amount of sympathy to make her motives questionable. Williams makes a fine comeback from straight-to-video obscurity as a movie mogul using cinematic terms he can't pronounce. George Hamilton and his iridescent tan score often as a studio sycophant who might be a yes-man if he'd shut up and listen to the questions. Director Mark Rydell (On Golden Pond) as Val's agent is right on time with some of Allen's best wisecracks. When Val complains that Hal stole his wife, the agent's response is: "He doesn't hold that against you."
Oddly enough, the ending of Hollywood Ending gives Allen problems, with a redemptive visit to Val's punk-rock son (a dated reference showing Allen's age) and a final twist bringing closure to Val's comeback attempt. This is one of Allen's longest films ever at 112 minutes, but staying true to abbreviated form may have been better. Lesser filmmakers don't know when to quit, but when a master like Allen is on a roll he doesn't want to stop. This time, moviegoers can roll right along with him.
Hollywood Ending
- Grade: A-
- Director: Woody Allen
- Cast: Woody Allen, Tea Leoni, Treat Williams, Debra Messing, Mark Rydell, Tiffani Thiessen
- Screenplay: Woody Allen
- Running time: 112 min
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