Tribeca Film Festival: Woody returns to New York

On Thursday evening, the eighth annual Tribeca Film Festival kicked off with the premiere of Woody Allen's hotly anticipated "Whatever Works," which stars Larry David and Evan Rachel Wood, marks Allen's return to New York filmmaking after a stretch in Europe and received a heavily mixed response.

Jeff Wells of Hollywood-Elsewhere calls it "a kind of dry farce that isn't naturalistic for a second and is basically about manner and whimsy and bile," adding that "it certainly doesn't go for broke" but is "fairly enjoyable" and "sometimes hilarious, especially when it rips into idiocy and thoughtlessness among the populace, and particularly red-state characters and values."

Others, however, say they simply couldn't get past the fact that Allen has again paired a young woman with a much older man in one of his films. Bruce Handy of Vanity Fair writes, "My real problem with the movie was the older-man-younger-woman theme, which has never been one of my favorite Woody motifs, even before it gained a real-life parallel. ... [T]he romances in Allen’s films often have a teacher-pupil quality, too, and in 'Whatever Works' we get that as well."

Sure, Allen employed it to great effect 30 years ago in "Manhattan" (1979), a film that paired Allen, then 42, with Mariel Hemingway, then 17. But if that film was a May-December romance, "Whatever Works" must be something more like a February-December variety, as David is 62 and Wood is 22. The fact that Allen's personal life has followed a similar course has certainly done nothing to take people's focus off that aspect of his films.

"Whatever Works," which is being distributed by Sony Pictures Classics, appears in limited release on June 19.

Photo: Larry David in "Whatever Works." Credit: Tribeca Film Festival

Comments

[Robert Hamer]

I must be honest, I am rather conflicted here. There is my utter delight with anything Larry David is involved with, and there is my complete disinterest in Woody Allen's work for the past fifteen years (and that includes his disgustingly overrated Match Point).

I'll take the buzz for this with a grain of salt.