BEFORE: It's finally here, my Woody Allen chain that I've been planning from day 1. Of course, it took me a while to get copies of every Allen film, some of which I've seen before - so I'll be concentrating on the ones I haven't. Eventually premium cable ran all of them, for some reason the last holdout turned out to be "Manhattan Murder Mystery". They haven't run "Blue Jasmine" yet, but I've got about 33 days to figure out how I'm going to watch that one.
I really thought I was going to get to these last year, but after focusing on the James Bond series, I found myself with only so many open slots left. But I think the timing is right this time, using Woody's films to finish off the romance chain and then lead me into Oscar season. Plus, what's great is that by waiting until year 6 of the project, I insured that these films could be judged on their own merits, without being tainted by any tabloid scandals. Umm, yeah.
Linking from "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice", Elliott Gould was also in a horrible film called "Picking Up the Pieces" with Woody Allen, a film I'm going to otherwise ignore.
THE PLOT: A playboy who refuses to give up his hedonistic lifestyle to settle down and marry his true love seeks help from a demented psychoanalyst who is having romantic problems of his own.
AFTER: Ugh, this one was tough to watch. But it does represent Woody Allen's film debut, as both an actor and a screenwriter. I'm sure it was a dream project for him to work with Peter Sellers, but the film toggles between unfunny and just plain dreadful, managing to sell both genders short. Men are all letches with uncontrollable hormones, who'll sleep with any available women, or pretty much the unavailable ones too. Which seems to be a problem in Paris (I assume this takes place in Paris, because all the women speak with French accents, but who knows..) because beautiful women keep throwing themselves at men, or even falling out of the sky and landing in their motorcars. And these women don't seem to care if the men are attractive rich fashion magazine editors, or weird psychotherapists, or just lowly strip club costume assistants.
The main character is that fashion editor, who has a problem that most male viewers would not even consider a problem, namely all the available beautiful women he encounters at his job. It's so tough for him to remain faithful to his girlfriend, who lives downstairs, that it seems like most times he doesn't even try.
Women don't fare much better - if they're not taking off their clothes and seducing men, then they're hounding their boyfriends to get engaged, or just plain acting hysterical or suicidal. Sorry, ladies of the 1960's, those are your only choices. I had trouble telling the different female characters apart, because their accents were all hard to understand, and they were all more or less painted with the same brush. It seems like this was written by a man who had no understanding of the whole gender. In fact, Woody Allen is seen in bed with a woman, but singing to her. I'm not sure he knew what else to do.
Another connection to last night's film, which featured the song "What the World Needs Now", which was written by Hal David and Burt Bacharach, who also wrote the title song for this film. Too bad it's one of the worst songs ever recorded, as sung by Tom Jones. I think it's all that Whoa-oh-whoa-oh WHOA riffing in the chorus, but then the verse starts up with its bad rhymes and weird syncopation, and that's even worse. My wife and I often sit in restaurants and make fun of silly songs from the 1960's and 70's and jokingly say, "This could be the worst song ever..." but I think in this case the ruling really does apply.
The movie doesn't seem to know what to do with its own characters, so it sends them all to the same hotel for the weekend, which calls to mind the bedroom farce genre, but then everyone ends up in the same room, so instead of everyone screaming at each other in pairs, they start screaming at each other en masse. This devolves into a go-cart chase scene, and a chase scene is the equivalent of just adding more Whoa-oh-WHOAs to the chorus to lengthen the song. Benny Hill learned everything he needed to know from films like this.
All in all, the audience gains zero insight to the battle of the sexes, and rather than learn how to be faithful to one woman, the male lead ends up back with his girlfriend almost by default. And the therapist will continue to fight with his wife the opera singer - who HAS to wear her Valkyrie costume all the time, and HAS to sing opera every time they cut to her, because that's what an opera singer does. Duh...
What utter nonsense.
Also starring Peter O'Toole (last seen in "Troy"), Peter Sellers (last seen in "The Ladykillers"), Romy Schneider, Capucine, Paula Prentiss, with a cameo from Richard Burton.
RATING: 2 out of 10 cafés
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