Ebert’s review here. Didn’t I hear there’s a love scene between Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz in this one? That’ll pack the cinemas. 
Scarlett Johansson is very popular in Thailand. Most Woody Allen films don’t make it to screens in Thailand, but they’ve shown every one that she’s been in.
Ebert is trying very, very hard (as critics always do) to find positive things to say about a Woody Allen film, and he’s not really succeeding, is he?
I’m not a Woody Allen fan- even his best movies are only mildly amusing to me.
Still, when people who WANT to love him can’t quite talk themselves into doing so, it’s a bad sign.
I mean, in the late Seventies and through most of the Eighties, critics called EVERY new Woody movie his best ever. When’s the last time you heard anyone say that?
I thought that was a positive review. The wife and I are big Woody Allen fans – the wife is one of the few Thais who even know who he is. I’ll admit some of his recent films have not been as good as earlier ones, but we find even those fun to watch. We only recently finally saw Anything Else (2003) and thought that was great. Melinda and Melinda (2004) and Match Point (2005) were good, too. And Sweet and Lowdown (1999) is one of our favorites.
I think it’s a very positive review. Woody Allen is obviously not everyone’s cup o’ tea, but if you’re a fan (like me), this review will make you want to see the flick.
I just realized I haven’t watched a Woody Allen film in about…25 years? Never paid for one at a theater, never saw Annie Hall or any of the others considered classics…and I really don’t feel the lack…
It’s opening in NY today (I think it is–any case, I’m going at 6 PM). I’m looking forward to this one–the preview looked like fun!
Personally, I cannot think of a single movie that could not be improved with a love scene between Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz.
I could. Brokeback Mountain, for one.
It’s tracking 81% at RT and 74 at Metacritic. Even with Woody’s fairly bad recent track record, I’ll probably go see it, though anyone looking for nudity from Ms. Cruz should check out this film (now also in theatres) instead.
He goes through high and low periods, but you’ve got to give credit to a film maker who remains as prolific as Allen is in his mid-70’s. His next film is already in post-production, according to IMDb.
In the mid-90s he had a bright period, producing Manhattan Murder Mystery, Bullets Over Broadway, Mighty Aphrodite, and Everyone Says I Love You over a 3 year period. All of them are good, I think that “Bullets” is brilliant.
In the last half of the 80s he turned out *Hannah and Her Sisters, Radio Days,[/] the “Oedipus Wrecks” segment of *New York Stories, *and Crimes and Misdemeanors.
In the last half of the 70s there was Love and Death, Annie Hall, Interiors, and Manhattan.
To get to this stuff I’m willing to put up with a string of Hollywood Endings once in a while…
Yes, I agree about Bullets over Broadway. And the wife absolutely adores Mira Sorvino in Mighty Aphrodite. For us, even a “lesser” Woody Allen film is better to watch than most stuff out there.
Nitpick: He’s only 72.
No nudity from Penelope or from anyone else for that matter. There’s even a silly scene wherein ScarJo, in bed with JavBar, clutches the bedsheet to her pendulous boobage–why? To keep them from being seen by him, with whom she’s just spent the last hour or two (presumably) with him seeing them close-up and personal? You;'ve heard of gratuitous nudity? That was gratuitous chastity, utterly illogical and tasteless.
I give it a B. (Broadway Danny Rose gets an A, Match Point an A-, Scoop a B-, Revenge of the Jade Scorpion a C, if you’re scoring at home.)
One of my all time favorite films is Radio Days.
He captures the nostalgia of the 40’s wonderfully.
It was kinda funny that–from a strictly artistic, aesthetic, plot-and-character-related point of view–I was on the verge of shouting at the screen “Show us yer tits!”
I have never–literally, I think–NEVER been in a post-coital bed with a woman who paid the slightest attention to whether she was brazenly putting her nipples on the fullest possible display. Talk about the horse and the barn door! It’s more like “At last! We’re liberated! Free to swing in the breeze, after months of captivity! Free at last, free at last, thank God A-mighty, we’re free at last!”
To top it off, this boob-concealment takes place as JavBar is receiving a disturbing phone call that upsets ScarJo terribly–not at all likely she’d be thinking about modesty at that moment.
Me, either. I’d like to see The Purple Rose of Cairo, but that’s about it. His film in which he was obsessed by Humphrey Bogart was mildly amusing(Play It Again, Sam or something), but meh.
I don’t see the need to feed his narcissism, really. Aren’t all his films about him, but thinly disguised? This one seems (from the review) to just be an elderly man’s fantasy. I’m not an elderly man, so no interest here. YMMV.
So, I won’t be seeing this film, either.
It’s not an elderly man’s fantasy. People seem to review Woody Allen’s life in place of his actual films.
There is no sex scene either. Scarlett and Penelope have two full-clothed kisses, each about two seconds long. Sex is not the point of the movie. Love and commitment and relationships and how they mirror and shape the rest of our lives is.
While the themes are interesting, the movie is barely a trifle. What is elderly about it is that it is an almost exact clone of a 1950s romantic comedy, the ones in which two naive American college girls travel to Europe to find deeper meaning to their lives than the shallow college boys they leave behind. Imagine Sandra Dee and Pamela Tiffin as the girls and Jean-Paul Belmondo as the man and you have the idea.
What drives this home is what’s left out of the movie. (What gets left out is almost always revealing.) Now obviously you don’t expect social realism from Woody Allen. But the entire movie, with one glaring exception, takes place in a world that could be transported directly back 50 years. The Americans, those idiots, spend all their time on cell phones rather than gazing deep into one another’s eyes. Javier Bardem takes one call on a cell, but otherwise the Spaniards live a glorious unmodern existence. They don’t use the internet. They don’t watch or even have televisions. They have pianos instead. Barcelona has no discos, no hypermarkets, no shopping malls, no apartment blocks, no freeways, no traffic, no factories. Every Spaniard lives in a glorious villa with gardens, dines in tiny quaint open-air restaurants, strolls in the moonlight. They do absolutely nothing but create and fuck. Just like those Parisians in all those 1950s films.
And it’s stunning. Bardem and Cruz are at least a hundred times more interesting than Johansson and Rebecca Hall. I would really have enjoyed a movie about the two of them and their friends without a single American in it.
If you want to hate the movie, go ahead. You can hate Woody Allen too, if you like. But dumping on a movie you’ll never see because of a completely false impression of it doesn’t win you any points.
I wasn’t trying to win points. I based my opinion on the trailers shown and the linked review that was posted. I don’t recall mentioning any social realism–in fact, this movie, by your own post, seems to be more fantasy (Barcelona residents don’t use the internet? and fuck all the time? amazing) than anything else. 2 women and one man is more a male fantasy than a female one. I didn’t mention any sex scenes–it’s a fantasy. Maybe I should have said titillation instead? Is that where the crossed communication came?(I’m assuming that 2 women and one man=sex scene to you? Not to me–it introduces the possibility of that, which the trailer is quite explicit about. Given that it’s Woody Allen (and it’s rating), I was sure there was no “explicit” sex).
I’m glad you liked the picture. I’m sure it will be popular. It doesn’t look like my cup of tea (but then Sandra Dee wasn’t either) and at the cost of movie tickets, I choose very few films to see. I don’t see any need to be particularly reverent about Woody Allen. YMMV.
I saw this today and was rather underwhelmed. I like Woody Allen and expected to enjoy it, but I left the theater feeling like I just didn’t get it. It’s light and pointless and the whole thing coms off like an attack on monogamy.
I found the premise unbelievable. I did not buy that two intelligent women (one of the engaged) would run off with a complete stranger with such an offensive proposition. I felt, in particular, that the ScarJo character was acting brainlessly and recklessly. That’s how tourists end up with their bodies dumped in oceans. I didn’t find the proposition whimsical and fun, I found it sleazy.
I basically found every main character to be irresponsible and sleazy, the women especially. Is it supposed to be endearing that they all cheat on their SO’s and sleep with anybody that winks at them?
Also, there was no plot. Everybody just switches (or adds) sexual partners once in a while in between interminable sightseeing tours of Spain. Then it’s over. Huh? I didn’t get it. What was the message with this thing.
I will say that the best thing about it was the chemistry between Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz and I agree with Exapno that movie about just those two characters would have been much more interesting.
Even the dialogue, which is usually one of Woody Allen’s strong points, was dull and uninteresting in this thing. It lacked his usual wit and insight. The themes were hackneyed (responsible guys are boring. Monogamy is slavery. It’s ok to cheat on people that love you if you’re bored), and other than Bardem and Cruz, the acting was mediocre. Scarlett Johannsen is spectacular to look at, but her performance in this is bland and unmemorable (granted, Allen seems more preoccupied with caressing her face with his camera than giving her any interesting lines, though).
I think it’s a credit to Javier Bardem that I didn’t find his character anywhere near as creepy and repellent as I should have. I hope he does something else with Cruz. Their scenes together pop, and they really make you feel like they have this love/hate history together. For some reason, I liked the way they both effortlessly switched back and forth between Spanish and English in their arguments together. It seemed authentic. I’ve seen bilingual couples argue that way before.
Javier bardem is smokin hot. I’ve seen him in other movies and think he’s swell.
How about the idea that a painter, other than a Picasso or someone, whose father lives in a very pleasant but non-mansion type house, would have a private plane? The plane was the only hint I got that Bardem’s character was a multi-millionaire.