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USA 2002
Directed by
Woody Allen
118 minutes
Rated PG

Reviewed by
Bernard Hemingway
3.5 stars

Hollywood Ending

Not even Woody Allen fans expect more than a few good jokes from the one-time maestro these days but with this double-edged poke at Hollywood's shallowness and the pretensions of auteurist film-makers they'll be rewarded. As usual, Allen concocts a semi-autobiographical vehicle for his anxiety-prone screen persona, Val Waxman, a “difficult” director who hasn’t has a hit for ten years and whose ex-wife (Téa Leoni) convinces her studio boss husband to-be (Treat Williams) to give him a shot at a comeback with a film about New York. Waxman goes psychosomatically blind on the eve of shooting and has to be nursed through the entire production.

Allen has truly plateau’d in recent years and his output varies withing a quite limited range but it is hard not to credit its overall consistent quality. Hollywood Ending is not great satire but it benefits from a bold concept, Allen’s rapid fire one liners and even some amusing Chaplinesque slapstick elements, ringing the changes on the familiar style with a good deal of success. We do at an early stage see a poster for Allen’s classic Manhattan on the wall, but if there is one notable flaw in this film it is that the film that Waxman is making bears no resemblance to the $60 million production about New York that was touted at the outset.  That at aside, Hollywood Ending is a solid example of Allen’s output, not likely to win new fans but enough to sustain his followers.

 

 

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