BEFORE: Woody carries over again, and I start to wrap up the Mia Farrow films.
THE PLOT: With a serial strangler on the loose, a bookkeeper wanders around town searching for the vigilante group intent on catching the killer.
AFTER: In this film, Woody Allen plays a nerdy guy who ends up being accused of a crime, with little evidence and public opinion turns against him. If only there were a way for me to make a connection to real life situations...
But seriously, this is set in some kind of foggy Eastern European city, where the circus is in town and a killer stalks the streets. The only thing that connects it to previous Woody Allen films seems to be the deteriorating relationships among the circus folk, and among the bookkeeper and his landlord/girlfriend and also his ex-fiancée, and the willingness of the main characters to have affairs and then agonize over them.
This is allegedly an homage to Franz Kafka, in the same way that previous Allen films were homages to Bergman or Fellini. Kafka's traditional depiction of the futility and meaninglessness of life seems like a better fit with his sensibilities, in my opinion.
The ending feels very rushed and sort of tacked-on, and relies on magic (or camera tricks, depending on what you believe). I think magic here is more of a problem than in "Alice", simply because the rest of the film is so straightforward and non-magical, so to close with this seems like a bit of a cheat, as if someone couldn't think of a proper wrap-up. This also contradicts any larger point that could have been made about vigilante justice, because that part of the plot was important before, and then got left behind.
Also starring Mia Farrow (last seen in "Alice"), John Malkovich (last seen in "The Man in the Iron Mask"), Donald Pleasance (last seen in "You Only Live Twice"), Lily Tomlin (last seen in "The Incredible Shrinking Woman"), John Cusack (last seen in "The Thin Red Line"), Jodie Foster (last seen in "Flightplan"), Kathy Bates (last seen in "Arthur 2: On the Rocks"), Julie Kavner (last seen in "Another Woman"), David Ogden Stiers (ditto), Philip Bosco (ditto), with cameos from Madonna, Wallace Shawn (last heard in "Toy Story 3"), Victor Argo, James Rebhorn (last seen in "Up Close & Personal"), Kate Nelligan (ditto), Daniel von Bargen (last seen in "Six Degrees of Separation"), John C. Reilly (last seen in "Anchorman 2"), Kurtwood Smith, Fred Gwynne (last seen in "Disorganized Crime"), Robert Joy, William H. Macy (last seen in "The Sessions"), Kenneth Mars
RATING: 4 out of 10 fingerprints
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