From: shit@woods.com   
      
   Woody Allen as Life Coach   
   By A. O. SCOTT   
      
      
   In his last movie, "Hollywood Ending," Woody Allen played a film director   
   who had gone blind. Not a bad joke, except that it seemed to represent a   
   case of what psychoanalysts might call displacement. Mr. Allen's recent   
   movies, after all, look just fine, full of the usual gorgeous Manhattan   
   light (courtesy of cinematographers like Zhao Fei) and warm, well-appointed   
   interiors (thanks to the efforts of Mr. Allen's longtime production   
   designer, Santo Loquasto). No, the problem with "Hollywood Ending," as with   
   "Small Time Crooks" and especially "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion," was   
   that the screenwriter (Mr. Allen, of course) was going deaf. His ear for the   
   idioms of New York speech had faltered gravely, and the timing and concision   
   of his jokes seemed terminally off.   
      
   While he may not be altogether cured, Mr. Allen is at least convalescing.   
   "Anything Else," his tart new antiromantic comedy, which opens today   
   nationwide, is small-scale and loose. It feels oddly long for a Woody Allen   
   picture, but its relaxed, casual air gives the humor room to breathe, and a   
   gratifyingly high proportion of the piled-up one-liners actually raise a   
   laugh. "Funny is money," says Danny DeVito, who plays a desperate talent   
   manager with a questionable talent for management, and "Anything Else,"   
   while no great bargain, is funny enough that your own dollars will not be   
   wasted.   
      
   It helps that Mr. Allen, whom I am alarmed to find looking more like my late   
   grandfather every time I see him, has declined to cast himself as the   
   romantic lead. That role, also known as the Woody Allen surrogate, belongs   
   to Jason Biggs, the amiable star of the recently consummated "American Pie"   
   trilogy and other young adult entertainments like "Loser" and "Saving   
   Silverman." Mr. Biggs plays Jerry Falk, a young comedy writer with the   
   expected array of problems: an uncommunicative therapist (William Hill), the   
   aforementioned manager and, above all, a spectacularly difficult girlfriend,   
   Amanda, played with feral, neurotic glee by Christina Ricci.   
      
   On paper, Amanda - dishonest, unfaithful, manipulative, undermining and so   
   on - might look like the figment of a sour, misogynistic imagination. But   
   Ms. Ricci, backed up by Stockard Channing, who plays Amanda's wayward   
   mother, turns her into a full-blooded comic monster. You can see why Jerry   
   is so helplessly smitten with her, and not only when she stalks around their   
   apartment in her underwear. Her reckless spontaneity and crazy emotional   
   rhythms knock him out of his rut of responsibility and make him feel   
   reassuringly sane.   
      
   The two of them also, less convincingly, share certain cultural passions and   
   opinions; their riffs on Billie Holiday and Dostoyevsky sound spliced in   
   from an old print of "Manhattan." But at least Mr. Allen has found the wit   
   to portray younger New Yorkers with something other than contemptuous   
   indifference.   
      
   In any case, as so often happens, Jerry and Amanda's relationship has gone   
   terribly awry; it's not so much a dead shark, to steal a line from "Annie   
   Hall," Mr. Allen's greatest breakup comedy, as one intent on devouring   
   everything in its path. But poor Jerry is stuck: his defining neurosis is an   
   inability to cut the ties that bind and gag him, which is why he needs an   
   alter ego of his own, a father confessor and mentor to guide him toward a   
   mature, responsible and fulfilling life.   
      
   Which sounds like a job for . . . Woody Allen? The director yammers and   
   flails onto the screen in the role of David Dobel, an older comedy writer   
   who takes Jerry under his skinny, perpetually flapping wing. The wonderful   
   thing about Dobel is that he is both an extension of earlier characters Mr.   
   Allen has played and a rebuke to much of what they stood for. "Do you know   
   anything about psychoanalysis?" Jerry earnestly asks him, and the line gets   
   an immediate laugh. Who does he think he's talking to? But it turns out that   
   Dobel has no use for Freud, preferring the wisdom of Henny Youngman and   
   other traditional Jewish sages.   
      
   Dobel works as a schoolteacher and favors big words like hebetudinous and   
   tergiversation, but one of his defining traits is a gruff,   
   finger-in-the-chest anti-intellectualism. Another is raging paranoia, most   
   of it focused on the omnipresent specter of anti-Semitism. But whereas   
   earlier characters might have expressed this state of mind through cringing   
   and self-pity, Dobel, though nuts, is also tough minded, pragmatic and   
   vengeful. He persuades Jerry to buy a gun, and - in a scene Woody Allen fans   
   have been waiting 30 years to savor, whether we knew it or not - takes a   
   crowbar to the car of a pair of enormous bullies who have stolen his parking   
   space.   
      
   Though Manhattan (shot this time by Darius Khondji) is as lovely, and as   
   loved, as ever - especially Central Park, which gives off an easy glow of   
   enchantment in the background - "Anything Else" views the city as a land of   
   traps and snares. Dobel, intervening on his young friend's behalf, nudges   
   Jerry toward a future in Los Angeles, where a nice television job is   
   waiting. In "Annie Hall," of course, California was a New York writer's   
   worst nightmare, a land of endless vacuousness, without the friction and   
   frenzy that make life interesting. (In "Hollywood Ending" it was the land of   
   smooth talk and big money.)   
      
   This time, though, the golden West hovers as an attractive alternative, an   
   escape from the enervating habits and connections that already, in his early   
   20's, threaten Jerry's sense of balance. The moral of this odd, diverting   
   fable may not be all that shocking, unless of course, you consider the   
   source. What solutions does Mr. Allen, in his aging wisdom, offer his young   
   hero? Dump your girlfriend, fire your agent, buy a gun and - perhaps above   
   all - terminate your analysis. Done.   
      
   "Anything Else" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult   
   guardian). It has many sexual references and a few sex scenes - none of   
   them, thank goodness, featuring the director.   
      
   ANYTHING ELSE   
      
   Written and directed by Woody Allen; director of photography, Darius   
   Khondji; edited by Alisa Lepselter; production designer, Santo Loquasto;   
   produced by Letty Aronson; released by DreamWorks Pictures. Running time:   
   108 minutes. This film is rated R.   
      
   WITH: Woody Allen (David Dobel), Jason Biggs (Jerry Falk), Christina Ricci   
   (Amanda), Stockard Channing (Paula), Danny DeVito (Harvey), Jimmy Fallon   
   (Bob), William Hill (Psychiatrist).   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)