Like Robin William’s out-of-focus actor in Deconstructing Harry, it’s often hard to really see any new Woody Allen film clearly.
For some, the director is a creepy old relic who shot his load in the seventies and eighties, then slept with his not-quite-technically underage not-quite-technically stepdaughter and keeps churning out ever-more-terrible movies to suck whatever money he still can from the wallets of the aging bourgeoisie pseudo-intellectuals willing to pay for his particular brand of nostalgic, non-threatening real estate porn. For others, the Soon-Yi controversy wasn’t as much of a deal-breaker as the sight of Allen snogging comely young co-stars who (to paraphrase Wooderson from Dazed and Confused) kept staying the same age while he kept getting older. Some just never dug his insular, overeducated, upper-class shtick in the first place. And even for die-hard fans, it’s hard not to greet each new Allen film like each new Prince album, hoping against hope that somehow this time it’ll be Purple Rain again, only to be disappointed when it's not (and wondering vaguely why he can’t just save up all his remaining talent for one last masterpiece rather than cranking out so much sub par material).
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