“Whatever Works”: It Doesn’t Work Anymore

Stop me if you’ve heard this one - Love triangle, star-crossed lovers, talk of high-brow art / photography, neurotic sarcasm balanced by 1950’s nostalgia? You probably didn’t need to lift an envelope to your head and channel Carnac to think of Woody Allen. Doing his best impression of someone doing an impression of his work, Woody returns to New York for his latest film “Whatever Works.” And, you almost wonder if the joke is in the name itself - “Whatever Works”, in other words, love triangles, neurosis; New York has worked for Woody, so why not have another go?
 
This is the gist of “Whatever Works”: Larry David plays an insane person who can’t open his mouth without spewing something hate-filled about something. By chance he meets Melody, a southern belle who happens to show up at his doorstep in Chinatown, and after begging her way into his apartment, is too dumb to realize that she’s in the wrong place. She soaks up his vitriolic misanthropy like a sponge and mid-way through the movie becomes something like Sarah Palin trying to channel Neitsczhe with a southern accent. She falls in love with him, and for reasons totally unexplained and made improbable by the first half of the movie, they wed. Then her mother shows up, also a cartoon character from the South clutching her Bible, and drinking bourbon, who is horrified by Melody’s new bohemian existence. Her father later shows up, and both parents quickly undergo transformations that are simultaneously predictable yet without any sort of real substance. By the end of the picture, everybody is happy - and it’s not that Woody doesn’t explain how everyone ends up happy, it’s only that there’s no glue or narrative to explain how any of it really happened.
 
Two points I’d like to borrow from other reviews, paraphrasing: 1) “Woody has never felt more out of place in New York than in this movie.” Walking out of the movie with a friend, he remarked how much he appreciates Woody’s romance of New York and seeing it in his films. And while that is 150% true of “Manhattan,” or “Annie Hall,” this movie felt like it was shot by a tourist. Grant’s Tomb, the Statue of Liberty and Chinatown are not the ubiqutous tree-lined blocks of the Upper East Side, or the bubble-domed Tennis courts, or even Central Park. Woody’s wonderful odes to Manhattan from decades past were love notes to the city, and an insider’s look at a frenetic and magical island. “Whatever Works” is claustrophobic, and confined to shots of landmarks with a lone mention of a building or street (Beekman Place?) probably too esoteric for most New Yorkers today.
 
2) This movie was written in the ’70s and concieved for Zero Mostel. I’ve only seen Mostel in the original “Producers” film, and only half of that film at that, and still it makes total sense. Boris Yellnikoff is a character written for Mostel, a larger than life man who could emobdy the psychotic intellectual blowhard that Larry David failed to animate. And I have nothing against David; he told Woody that he was making a mistake by casting someone who can’t act. But Mostel could have given this character a piece of humanity, or substance.
 
The problem here is that you can’t fake substance. Woody’s characters from his earlier pictures had depth, and their conversations about high-brow intellectual artists, or deep-seeded neurosis didn’t fall flat or feel out of place because he was able to convince the audience that they were real enough. But nothing felt real about this movie- not even the backdrop of New York, and certainly not the one-note supporting players woven together to no real end. Worse yet was Woody’s choice to have Boris address the audience at various points in the film; it’s done for no real reason, feels completely out of place within the context of a wholly conventional film, and is another sign that Woody has gotten lazy.
 
Another friend of mine remarked that “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” was pleasant enough even it was lazy film making. I didn’t necessarily agree, however, I would submit that even if one felt Woody had gotten lazy with “Vicky”, it was a simple enough story to pull off with a half effort. “Whatever Works” would require much more heavy lifting - these characters require nuance, context and life. What we’re given are 5 notes played over and over again for an hour, and when the notes change, we have no idea why. The effect on the audience is the same: a giant headache.