With “Anything Else,” Woody Allen returns to his classic style of filmmaking, creating rich panoply of characters with even richer panoply of neuroses. Not since 1997’s “Deconstructing Harry” has Allen used his proven formula of manifesting himself in his protagonists, and it has been even longer since Allen employed his trademark move of having characters turn, break scene and speak directly to the camera. Returning to those classic techniques with “Anything Else,” Allen creates one of his finer films, with a delicately intricate plot, phenomenal acting and delightfully cynical humor.
Jerry Falk (Jason Biggs, “American Pie”) is a comedy writer with insecurities so all-encompassing that he has been forced to choose “psychoanalysis over real life.” (Read: Jerry is Woody Allen.)
He is afraid to sleep alone and, resultantly, is cornered in a relationship with Amanda (Christina Ricci, “The Opposite of Sex”), a shrewish, unstable girlfriend who cheats on him in the Sistine Chapel. Another character sums things up well when he suggests that the Pentagon should use Amanda’s hormones for chemical warfare.
Jerry’s shrink (William Hill, “The Devil’s Advocate”) is of little help. He has forbidden the protagonist to take a job in Los Angeles, as it would require the termination of their therapy sessions. Yet the same psychoanalyst threatens to unilaterally end the sessions anyway if Jerry ever owns a firearm. Most tragically, though, the shrink’s refusal to actively engage Jerry results more in a series of rhetorical conversations than any meaningful form of therapy.
Enter Dobel (Allen, “Annie Hall”), an older comedy writer determined to take Jerry under his wing and rectify all the wrongs that the young scribe’s girlfriend and therapist have created. Jerry takes to Dobel like Mitch Albom to Morrie Schwartz, eager to soak up his elder’s uncoated advice.
However, Dobel is far from stable himself. The philosophical scribe, whose Semitism leads to extreme paranoia, is so untrusting of society that he spends his spare time piecing together a self-survival kit complete with Soviet rifles and Sophia Lauren films.
Biggs plays the role of a younger Allen beautifully, and even masters his whiny, stuttering speech mechanisms and subtle moodiness. It truly is a defining role for the actor, who seems to be tracing the evolution of sexual humor in cinema backwards, having started with the graphic insertion of his genitals into an apple pie in 1999’s “American Pie” and now testing the more cerebral eroticism of Allen’s own genre of comedy, one that peaked in the 1970s.
Ricci is also excellent as Amanda, showing that she has come a long way from her more “innocent” days as Wednesday Adams. The actress proves that she can go between sexy and shrewish with little difficulty, a talent that lends her character added depth, but Ricci does make a fool of herself in one early scene as she inexplicably breaks in and out of a British accent.
Not to be forgotten are Danny DeVito and Stockard Channing in two critical supporting roles. DeVito plays Jerry’s fragile agent Harvey, creating a smoothly sincere yet inevitably tragic character perfectly on cue with the script’s demands.
Channing plays Paula, Amanda’s midlife crisis-stricken mother who invades Jerry’s apartment and starts snorting cocaine off of his laptop. Channing is stellar in the aloof role, bringing the perfect amount of madness to the screen. At one point, she breaks out in piano-led harmony, and the song serves as a gentle reminder that her voice is just as finely tuned today as it was in 1978 when she played Rizzo in “Grease.”
The film’s only serious flaw is Allen’s customary failure to recognize a world outside of New York City. The writer/director/actor, who once quipped that yogurt has more living culture than Los Angeles, may have trouble relating to audiences with jokes centered on Con-Edison, The Village Voice, Fieldston and other exclusive New York institutions.
In a bizarre move, Woody Allen is absent from the trailer for “Anything Else” as well as all of the television commercials, only garnering mention as the writer/director.
Meanwhile, his character in the film, Dobel, has an infatuation with an obscure book titled “Never Trust a Naked Bus Driver.” The film never mentions the book’s author, the late Jack Douglas, or his popularity in the ’60s, yet you get the distinct feeling that, unlike Douglas, Allen can never truly have his name detached from his better works like “Anything Else,” as their unique neurosis can only be understood through their uniquely neurotic creator.
Grade: A/B
