Celebrity

Here is that rare Woody Allen movie that just didn’t work for me, on any level. It’s hard to say why, except that it didn’t seem to come together to amount to anything other than a series of incidents.

Kenneth Branagh is the main character, the one that Woody usually plays, a man who is a fast talker and who is eagerly seeking celebrity. He is an unsuccessful novelist, who now turns to celebrity journalism. He has been married to Judy Davis for sixteen years, but he is having one of those boring mid-life crises. He divorces her. He then has a series of encounters. Charlize Theron is a supermodel and party girl, with whom he wrecks his prize Bentley. Leonardo DiCaprio is a movie star who leads a frantic, crazed life and who leads him into a sexual foursome. Other things like that happen. But the surprise is that poor little insecure Judy becomes a celebrity television interviewer, and has the recognition Kenneth longs for. It sounds interesting, and the cast is phenomenal, with Winona Ryder, Melanie Griffith, Joe Mantegna, Gretchen Mol, Bebe Neuwirth, and many, many more. All of them do good work, but Woody can’t seem to find a good reason for having made this movie.