Whatever Works

Whatever Works doesn’t, really. Woody Allen’s first film set in Manhattan in four years is based on 30-something-year-old material originally written with the great Zero Mostel in mind. You can smell the mustiness.

In a narrative reminiscent of Pygmalion and Born Yesterday, let alone Mighty Aphrodite, Larry David plays a brilliant former physicist turned suicidal misanthrope whose crotchety, crabbed existence gets turned sideways by a naïve Southern runaway (Evan Rachel Wood) who moves with him and gets pursued by her estranged parents, a motor-mouthed Bible-thumper played by Patricia Clarkson and gun-happy, not-so-straight-arrow Ed Begley, Jr. Romantic couplings and un-couplings ensue involving such other cast members as Henry Cavill, John Gallagher Jr. and Jessica Hecht, all in service of illustrating Allen’s thesis that in a chaotic, senseless world, we must grab onto any kind of romantic pairing, no matter how unconventional.

The problem is that, despite some laugh-out-loud one-liners, highly entertaining performances and strong cinematography by the great Harris Savides, the movie often feels forced, hemmed-in and stage-y. What’s more, we’ve already seen Allen touch on some of this same stuff years ago in other, better films like Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters and Broadway Danny Rose. As lovers of Curb Your Enthusiasm might predict, the acerbic, prickly, rant-friendly David is as inspired a Woody Allen substitute as one could hope for. David may not be an actor’s actor, but he spits out some of Allen’s funnier one-liners and rambling diatribes with grump and snap, even when the script unwisely forces him to address the audience directly while co-stars wonder aloud who he’s talking to. Wood, looking radiant, is terrific as the sweet-natured dim bulb who, in falling for David, half digests his influences such as Fred Astaire, classical music and incessant whining. Clarkson, who was also in Allen’s much better Vicky Cristina Barcelona, has a high old time transitioning from born again, Bible-thumping matron to freewheeling artist and liberated woman.

The good news is that Whatever Works is better than Anything Else, Melinda and Melinda, Scoop and Cassandra’s Dream. The even better news is that Allen is already filming his next picture.