Review - Whatever Works

A Simple Twist of Fate

Whatever Works

Score: 9,0

We can recognize Woody Allen’s movies just checking out the initial credits. The black background, white Benguiat typeface and old songs playing, that I believe are from the 1920’s until the 1950’s. Besides, of course, the neurotic annoying talkative person that when he acts in his own movies he usually plays. I now believe that that’s how he is, and these characters are a way for him to see himself in a new reality, living different situations and doing things he wouldn’t, so he satisfies himself this need through his pictures.

Well, the annoying neurotic person this time is Larry David, who has already been an annoying neurotic (and inappropriate) person in Curb Your Enthusiasm for a while, so he definitely knew what he was doing. In the picture he tells his story, how his first marriage didn’t work and how the unexpected happened to him. The unexpected is called Evan Rachel Wood, gorgeous as usual, playing a young girl from Mississippi, with a very characteristic (and strong) accent. I like Evan. Since Thirteen and Running With Scissors and could tell that she was a good actress. Such a good actress that we could never tell that she is crazy enough to date Marilyn Manson. I just haven’t seen her doing comedies.

Evan shows up in his door (in NY). She ran away from home and has no place to go, starving and looking for shelter, and she finds rescue in Larry. She is naïve and is treated like the personification of the universal stupidity by him, who’s such a pain in the ass, negative, grumpy and hypochondriac. Totally folkloric, you can’t take him seriously. And she gets up fascinated by the genius he self-proclaims to be, and by his supposed intelligence and he enjoys transmitting his knowledge to her. And they learn to live with each other and their relationship grows.

The cast has some other people that just appear later and I won’t spoil details from the script telling exactly what they do. Patricia Clarkson (who worked in Vicky Cristina Barcelona and was nominated for an Academy Award for Pieces of April - which I really enjoyed) as Evan’s mother, Ed Begley Jr. as her father, and there’s always the heartthrob, to make the annoying guy (once the universe evolves around him) feel inferior (what’s one more neurosis for someone who has so many?), function taken by Henry Cavill, from The Tudors, and a few years ago was considered the most unlucky man in Hollywood for losing 2 roles for Robert Pattinson, in Twilight and Harry Potter, Superman Returns for Brandon Routh and James Bond to Daniel Craig. I wouldn’t exactly consider that bad luck, except for Twilight. But losing work to all that dramatic eloquence that comes from Pattinson must be really frustrating…

Woody Allen might have won the Best Comedy Picture Golden Globe early this year for Vicky Cristina Barcelona, but in my opinion this one is way better. There are jokes even in billboards, like when Evan goes to a rock concert. And the story just grows through time. The beginning may be a little difficult because it’s hard to stand the annoying guy, but when Evan comes up everything changes. She’s got almost all the jokes, and she should be at least be nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a comedy role, because we all know the winner is gonna be Meryl Streep in Julie & Julia. Patricia Clarkson also adds so much to the story, Henry comes to provide some sighs, and Ed is just the cherry on the top.

At least Allen’s given a break to Scarlet Johansson. I doubt she would do it as good as Evan did. And it’s nice to see Woody coming back to NY after shooting in Europe for a while, once he couldn’t raise funds in the US. But even so this was limited release. Very few people have seen it. One curious thing about the production is that this script was written in the 1970’s, but he filed it. He decided to produce it during the screenwriters strike, back in 2008, and just had to change a few references to make it more current. It’s amazing to see how the criticisms to the religious morals (Christianity in this case) are still valid nowadays. They probably will always be…