(1998, b/w) After Tony Gardella (Joe Mantegna) accidentally makes acquaintance with divorcee Robin Simon (Judy Davis), who's in the office of "the Michelangelo of Manhattan" for a consultation with the famous cosmetic surgeon (thin lips), he takes her to a screening of a picture by director John Papadikas, a pretentious auteur who films in black-and-white with flashbacks.

This is a pretentious black-and-white comedy with flashbacks from writer/director Woody Allen (too old for the role) with Kenneth Branagh sounding too much like Allen not to be intentional self-parody in the character of Lee Simon, a travel-magazine writer and all-around louse. Robin gets hysterical in the theater when she sees her former spouse with another woman. Is this a form of Allen's self-flagellation for his own inappropriate antics during the '90s? The entire movie is an elaborate joke with a one-word punch line.

At the outset a director is frantic to get his star actress Nicole Oliver (Melanie Griffith) into the shoot of a scene before the skywriting overhead fades; afterward Lee talks up an extra, Nola (Winona Ryder) - calling herself just "a face in the crowd" - but what a face ("obscure object of desire"), remembering her as a waitress in a restaurant, before rushing off with Nicole for an interview inside her childhood residence: "I can't sleep with you," she says because her husband owns her body from the neck down.

Following his attending alone his high-school reunion (Glenwood High's class of 1975) at age 40, noticing "capped teeth and balding heads," Lee asked for a divorce after sixteen years ("I'm not happy") from his inhibited, Catholic wife Robin after admitting to trysts ("I can't be dishonest and I have been") with her friends Allison and Sheila, more than willing to accept all the blame.

Single again, he gets wild with a "polymorphously perverse" supermodel (Chalize Theron), following her runway appearance ("every curve in your body fulfills its promise") for an underwear fashion show, in his 1967 Aston Martin: "for you I'd be willing to catch terminal cancer."

Formerly a modest English teacher, Robin accepts a job with Tony's TV production company, gradually rising to host of her own show, Manhattan Moods, (becoming the kind of woman she always hated but happier) interviewing celebrities. Afraid that Tony, a great guy, "better than face work," might wander if he finds her disappointing in bed, Robin ("I want him to have the best") seeks advice from a female sex expert who had appeared on her program: a hilarious lesson in oral sex (previously experienced like the Crucifixion), massaging bananas with the lips.

Elsewhere Lee employs sycophancy (including joining him and two women in bed) to get bad-boy actor Brandon Darrow (Leonardo DiCaprio) interested in his screenplay. Resuming work on his third novel (screenplays have their place, a respected editor tells him, but nothing like a serious book), he also gets into a serious relationship with Bonnie (Famke Janssen), an editor with a publishing firm, who does with his manuscript what only a woman scorned would do.

"When it comes to love," says Robin, "it's luck," but feeling guilty with such good luck (waiting for the other shoe to fall), she skips out on gentle, generous, gentlemanly Tony; Olga the psychic reader tells her: "You need a shrink."

Can a celebrity's poking fun at other celebrities and himself be funny? (Somewhat like a career politician who's been in Congress for more than a quarter of a century claiming to be an outsider to Washington's influences, scandals, and intrigues.) Who's laughing, and is it at him or with him?

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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