Celebrity

Celebrity is a typical, in a tired way, outing from Allen with a large cast of well-known actors and an episodic structure that free-wheels across the subject matter announced by its title without arriving anywhere in particular.

The most extended single story belongs to the adventures of Kenneth Branagh (doing a good job imitating Allen, albeit ultimately unconvincing in the director's stock nebbish character) and Judy Davis, as his chronically nervy ex-wife (Davis had played Allen's extra-marital squeeze, in a very similar performance, in his previous film Deconstructing Harry) as each searches for the fulfilment that they did not find in each other. This central story is intercut with segments featuring the likes of Charlize Theron, Melanie Griffith and Winona Ryder.

As either a satire or a drama it is not particularly focussed, being more adept at amusing pot-shots than any convincing narrative arc and particularly in its latter stages it tends to lose its way (did we really need the sequence in which Leonardo Di Caprio trashes a hotel room then involves the Branagh character in a drug-fuelled foursome or, in an especially tasteless scene). Cinematography is by Sven Nykvist, not that, bar a couple of scenes, that is particularly noticeable with no apparent rationale for the film being in black and white (it looks as if it was actually filmed in colour).

 

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