Whatever Works (2009)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Larry David plays a Woody Allen-type character in a Woody Allen film that was meant to be made in 1970's. David's character Boris is a detestable misanthrope. His judgmental, condescending nature is so vile it begins to grow on you. I thought this was bound to be a great film. Then we are introduced to his southern girlfriend and her family and we begin to enter very stale territory. They are all stereotypes that too blatant for even Woody Allen, a man who doesn't shy away from mocking other i cultures, notably his own. The creative energy skids to a stop. Moreover, I thought that the film clearly has a cynical metropolitan bias in which the southern family is considered redeemed only when they convert to Boris's way of life. If that was meant to be endearing, I must have missed it. Little sparks of genius, as with every Woody Allen movie, but Whatever Works is undoubtably his weakest comedy.

Larry David plays a self-described 'unlikable genius,' a pessimistic former-professor of physics at Columbia who hates most everyone and sees life as a futile existence; one night, he allows a 21-year-old runaway from Mississippi to sleep on his couch, which changes not just his life but the lives of everyone around him. Lightweight happily-ever-after tale from writer-director Woody Allen begins on too-brash a note, but soon becomes a funny, daffy urban valentine peopled with talent-loving eccentrics and die-hard romantics. Central couple Larry David and Evan Rachel Wood are fine but get completely upstaged once Wood's mother, played by Patricia Clarkson, enters the scene (she's wonderful). An entertaining little comedy about relationships; nothing really memorable, but light on its feet and with several amusing one-liners. **1/2 from ****

Woody Allen's comedies early on were modern, edgy. Even movies he did in the 90s retained comedic value, like Bullets Over Broadway. Now it seems he's regurgitating Annie Hall in the worst way. All he writes about is love and eventually writing about the same thing for decades will leave you with nothing new to say, especially a topic like love which is widely and extensively written about. The jokes could have been funny, Larry David is hilarious, but Woody Allen's writing comes out stale. I'm already familiar with neurotic-Jew- with- existentialist-crisis character/dialogue in new York. Yawn. Nothing ever happens in his films, its insufferably anticlimactic. This movie only serves as Woody Allen's sick fantasy to have sex with a 21 year old girl, even though even the most idiotic redneck would avoid this character's abusive pedophile whiny ass like the plague. Yet he is praised for his talent and imagination?! How original. The acting is so fake like a bad school play it doesn't seem polished enough to make it to the screen. But what could I expect? The plot reflects his true life which I find more disgust than humor in his arrogant way of portraying an old mans sexual fantasies.

If you like Larry David from "Curb Your Enthusiasm," you'll love this 2009 film from Woody Allen, "Whatever Works," starring David, Evan Rachel Wood, Patricia Clarkson, and Ed Begley Jr.David, as usual, plays an impossible human being, Boris, who "almost was nominated" for either the Pulitzer or Nobel Prize, I can't remember which, a self-described genius who sees nothing but gloom and doom wherever he turns. He sees the world going to hell in a handbasket, and after he finishes describing it, you will, too, if you don't already. I admit it's looking pretty bad.Then he meets Melody, a young runaway southern girl who moves in on him - first she wants food, then, being homeless, she needs a place to stay. Boris winds up marrying her.When her mother (Patricia Clarkson) arrives, she is appalled by the way Boris lives (in a dump) and his advanced age. She immediately sets out to find someone else for Melody. While looking, she also finds herself and becomes an artistic photographer who sleeps with every man she meets. Then Melody's father (Begley) arrives, and I'll stop there.The acting is terrific, with Evan Rachel Wood turning in a wonderful performance as an upbeat, sweet southern gal who is fascinated by Boris even if she doesn't always get what he's saying. Begley is a riot, and Clarkson has a different kind of role for her, less serious but no less intense.Someone on this board said Woody Allen is obsessed with death, sex, and intellect. Whoever said that left out May-December relationships, at which he seems to be an expert. I have no idea whether anything printed about him at the time Blue Jasmine came out is true but there's no denying his interest in the under-25 crowd.This is talky movie with a lot of humor, and we don't have David doing a Woody impression. Rather, he talks more like himself, and some of the dialogue is a riot. And like all of Woody's films, there's a theme. In Match Point, it was luck; In Crimes and Misdemeanors, life goes on after mortal sin, and here it's if you have a chance at happiness, take it. Do whatever works. I liked it.