You seem to want to defend the film. Not necessary – I should stress that I enjoyed it and I’m not condemning it, and I’m absolutely a great Woody Allen fan. It’s just that my perception of it was underwhelming and I consider it to be overrated.
From Wikipedia:
More critically, Peter Cowie commented that the film “suffers from its profusion of cultural references and asides”. Writing for New York magazine, John Simon called the film “unfunny comedy, poor moviemaking, and embarrassing self-revelation,” and wrote that Keaton’s performance was “in bad taste to watch and indecency to display,” saying that the part should have been played by Robin Mary Paris, the actress who appears briefly in the scene where Alvy Singer has written a two-character play nakedly based on himself and Annie Hall. Simon’s review of Annie Hall “It is a film so shapeless, sprawling, repetitious, and aimless as to seem to beg for oblivion. At this, it is successful.” Annie Hall - Wikipedia
Criticism of the film as “sprawling, repetitious, and aimless” seems supported by the actual story about how it was made (“Brickman” here is Marshall Brickman, co-writer of the screenplay along with Allen):
Editor Ralph Rosenblum’s first assembly of the film in 1976 left Brickman disappointed. “I felt that the film was running off in nine different directions,” Brickman recalled. “It was like a first draft of a novel… from which two or three films could possibly be assembled.” Rosenblum characterized the first cut, at two hours and twenty minutes, as “the surrealistic and abstract adventures of a neurotic Jewish comedian who was reliving his highly flawed life and in the process satirizing much of our culture… a visual monologue, a more sophisticated and more philosophical version of Take the Money and Run”. Brickman found it “nondramatic and ultimately uninteresting, a kind of cerebral exercise.” He suggested a more linear narrative.
The present-tense relationship between Alvy and Annie was not the narrative focus of this first cut, but Allen and Rosenblum recognized it as the dramatic spine, and began reworking the film “in the direction of that relationship.” Rosenblum recalled that Allen “had no hesitation about trimming away much of the first twenty minutes in order to establish Keaton more quickly.” According to Allen, “I didn’t sit down with Marshall Brickman and say, ‘We’re going to write a picture about a relationship.’ I mean the whole concept of the picture changed as we were cutting it.”
Annie Hall was named Best Picture in a year in which the competition was pretty drab and ultimately forgettable. (Star Wars being the exception.) Let’s just say it was the best picture for the time it was released. It wouldn’t have won the year before or the year after, two years that saw some powerful and memorable films nominated.
It was also a step forward for Allen, whose wacky comedies may have been brilliant, but had little depth. Hollywood likes to see directors spread their wings. I’ve always been an Allen fan, but I’ve only seen Annie Hall once, and though I enjoyed it, I’ve never had the urge to see it again, unlike some of his other films that I’ve seen several times.
My point was not whether I personally liked the film. My point was that there was no significantly large number of critics who disliked it. The problem is that you don’t understand what Wikipedia is doing in the section Critical Response. Wikipedia always quotes some critics who dislike a film. It doesn’t matter if they have to look very hard to find some such critics. They consider it necessary to find somebody who doesn’t like the film, no matter how few there are.
For whatever it’s worth, I disagree, since I consider Annie Hall to be as good as Taxi Driver and Star Wars, and I think it’s better than Network, Rocky, All the President’s Men, and Deer Hunter, while the other films from those three years aren’t up to that level.
What I do or do not understand about Wikipedia policies is irrelevant. My point is that some respected critics (admittedly a small minority) seemed to dislike it with same intensity as many of those who strongly praised it. Indeed, the very first critic review at RT rates it “rotten”. Moreover, as I noted in the previous post, I can see their point (I don’t agree that it’s “rotten”, but I can follow their reasoning about why it’s not great).
Bottom line: I saw Annie Hall for the first time last night, and as someone who holds Woody Allen in high regard as a comedic genius and talented filmmaker, and considering the great accolades this movie received, I felt it was overrated. It was NOT a bad movie. I enjoyed it. But unlike many other Woody Allen films (some of which I’ve watched multiple times) I don’t think this one merits re-watching.
Every film has at least a small minority who dislike it. The fact that the very first critic review at RT rates it as rotten means nothing. 124 critics rated it as fresh and 4 rated it as rotten. It was just a random choice to put one of the rotten reviews first. Incidentally, some people think John Simon was not a very good critic.
I’ve often said that the late Roger Ebert was always my favourite critic, and that I had yet to see any review of his that I disagreed with – which was truly remarkable. Well, this was a first – Ebert regarded Annie Hall as Allen’s best film, and I don’t. I guess at some level the film just didn’t connect with me.
Well, given that both Katherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby (1938) and Carole Lombard in My Man Godfrey (1936) preceded Annie Hall by about 40 years, I’d say…No.
I tried to find a long list of manic pixie dream girl movies. The following is as close as I could find to such a list. It includes 82 movies from 1938 to 2014. The problem is that I don’t understand why some of them are included. The term “manic pixie dream girl” was created in 2007, incidentally:
Yeah, this isn’t something I know much about but I am aware there is gray area in the minds of popular culture which is why I asked people. I could search the Internet for the first time an actress did a thing also.
How could they leave My Man Godfrey out of the list? From the definition on the IMDB page:
Definition: The Manic Pixie Dream Girl give new meaning to the depressing, brooding, stodgy male’s life. She’s stunningly attractive, energetic, high on life, full of wacky quirks and idiosyncrasies, usually including childlike playfulness and often with a touch of wild hair dye. She’s inexplicably obsessed with the male protagonist, on whom she will focus her crazy antics until he learns to loosen up and usually fall in love.
Carole Lombard, in many ways, helped define this character, especially in My Man Godfrey (link to Wiki with plot: My Man Godfrey - Wikipedia), but also in Twentieth Century, a film that was one of the first screwball comedies.
Movie Night Monday. I saw The Accountant, a B thriller with a slew of good actors, starring Ben Affleck as an autistic accountant/anti-hero who uncooks the books for various bad guys. This movie was recommended to us… because we have a son who is autistic (and very good at math.)
There’s a lot to unpack here. First off all, this is a strange film. For a thriller it has a surprisingly small amount of action throughout its 2:07 run time. Much of the narrative drive is derived from getting to know the quirky, uptight protagonist through present day + a series of disturbing flashbacks and trying to reconcile how that weird guy could be the elusive criminal the government is tracking down. Problem is, once that question is answered, it doesn’t make sense. This is an entertaining movie on its face, with some wonderful turns by JK Simmons, John Lithgow, Jeffrey Tambor, Jean Smart - lots of famous people in this movie. But when you think about it in retrospect you can’t help but go “Huh. This doesn’t make sense.”
Then there’s the autism messaging. This feels very much like it was written in earnest by someone who had an autistic cousin or something, indicating a bit more than a surface level understanding but still some major missteps. For the most part, Affleck’s character was plausibly autistic in the classic sense of being rigid and inflexible, struggling with social cues and having sensory issues. But the movie implied that this guy who HATES unpredictability can handle his ultraviolent chaotic lifestyle because his father exposure therapied him out of his sensory reactions and taught him to channel his “autistic rage” by letting trainers beat the shit out of him. That’s not how autism works. Sensory sensitivities aren’t anxiety and can’t be treated like anxiety, and meltdowns are not something autistic people can draw upon like some jedi mind trick. To me this is some terrible messaging about how to treat autistic kids - and the cousin who recommended the film apparently thought this perspective would help us, which is troubling. Parents already get enough of unwarranted “he just needs more discipline” advice.
Finally there’s this push at the end, not spoiling the plot ending but it ends on this note of, “It’s okay to be different, autistic people are capable of great things,” and I’m thinking, “Ok, so is the takeaway here, “You too may see your son grow up to be an ultraviolent borderline sociopathic antihero?”” It’s just such a weird time and place to go for that messaging. The protagonist is in no way someone to emulate.
This is truly one of the strangest films I’ve seen in a while. But it was fun to watch.
Don’t forget that the big dance number won the Oscar for best original song (the film’s only Oscar nomination and win). I saw many similarities between RRR and the Barbie movie; it looks like I wasn’t the only one.
That’s me. I can remember when he would continually rag on Carol Kane. He thought she was hideously ugly, and that was the reason for not watching any film she was in. I’ve also seen him a time or two on talk shows, and I came away with the opinion that he was a smarmy Nazi. I don’t think I’ve ever agreed with one of his reviews.
I always though he came off as a snooty gasbag. Here’s a story about him, which involves Woody Allen’s “Radio Days,” a movie I love and think is very clever and funny.
This isn’t second-hand. I actually saw this on live TV:
Simon was on the CBS morning show (whatever it was called at the time), and the show had a live audience. Simon blasted “Radio Days” as completely unfunny with not a laugh to be had. They then showed a clip. The studio audience laughed, out loud and heartily, about the “unfunny” clip they showed. Even the show’s host was laughing. He sat there stunned, with nothing to say, probably thinking what sort of dimwitted cretins would actually laugh at something HE (sniff) thought was unfunny.
I don’t recall them having him on the show after that.