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Summary: An eccentric man (Larry David) is taken into a series of adventures and encounters with his friends from Greenwich, a young woman from the South (Evan Rachel Wood), and her parents.
Despite the repulsive main character Whatever Work works for me. Not having seen too many Woody Allen movies I can't really compare it with he's earlyer work..
If one accepts the usual theatrics by Larry David, there are real gems in his interactions with Evan Rachel Wood. I have reservations mainly toward the happy-end, which almost ruined the well established dickheadedness of David's character. Whatever. It works.
The movie started out funny with the opening scene, however, they should have cut it back a bit (it seemed a bit stretched out). The girl was kinda decent, but the movie seemed to be a bit lacking of something, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I think that Woody Allen and Larry David are a good match, but I prefer L.D. in his show (C.Y.E.), his scenarios are funnier and keep you on your toes. Without giving it away...the cause of the limp is hilarious...the second time around...priceless!
Classic Woody Intellectual narcissistic deconstruction of the human condition only with a warm hollywood wrap up. Hilarious. Any Larry David or Woody Allen enthusiast's delight. Larry David is not a typical Allen comedic character lead choice, but I am just so biased coz I love LD that it worked for me, and because I think he delivered so well Allen's neurotic narcissistic side, but also his old wise wisdom that inevitably led to the hopeful ending and it's title to suit.
Definitely very minor Allen. Yet still with a bunch of good lines and a few truly great ones. Unfortunately it starts out strong and slowly, but steadily loses its way.
This character-driven story only has enough character and enough drive for perhaps the first 30 or 40 minutes. After this the characters seem to have nowhere to go, so the parents are introduced. Neither are interesting characters. Both are huge clichés. Both go through overnight character-development so unbelievable and uninteresting I almost left the theater in protest. What started out as an interesting relationship study was degraded to something silly, totally undermining the first act.
somewhat of a rehash of his earlier scripts, it's obvious that Allen wasn't aiming to innovate. that said, the movie doesn't break ground, but still, it's quite funny and entertaining from start to finish. Allen is comfortable in his home court NY, and manages to squeeze some more juice out of his trademark shtick. I can't quite understand his fixation of barely legal teens, though.
Good comedy with tremendous dialogues and, frankly, I don't know when I laughed so much during a movie for the last time. Wonderfully cynical, refreshingly honest. It's not a master piece by any measure but watching Larry David being a dick for an extended period of time was quite enjoyable.
Ten years after his great expectoration of bile in Deconstructing Harry, Woody Allen comes up with Whatever Works -- the most shameless, cynically titled Hollywood con job since the days of Billy Wilder.
The first ten minutes or so almost feel like vintage Woody Allen (and Larry David makes a superb Allen avatar), but the more caricatures from Mississippi show up, the weaker the movie gets. The love stories are tepid and the female characters are so awful and idiotic it's unbelievable that this is the same writer-director of the women in Hannah and Her Sisters (or, for that matter, Vicky Cristina Barcelona just last year).
As we know from past experience, other people trying to be the voice of Woody Allen never works. I love Larry Davis but here he sounds incredibly awkward delivering these lines. The film does have a few good jokes, even one or two howlingly funny ones. But they're lost in a morass of tired bits, uninteresting plot developments, and stock characters who transform into other stock characters. The uptight religious conservative who discovers he's a repressed homosexual? REALLY, Woody?
The laughs come fast and furious in the first half or so when Larry David dominates the proceedings. But as more and more characters arrive, Allen's poor caricatures sap the life from what had seemed to be an interesting and even touching movie. Instead, the cynicism gets piled on and on, and the preachiness becomes tiresome rather than entertaining.
it's not like it doesn't have its moments or some right points but in general the comedy is not funny or witty enough as it pretends to be. Bleh. Watch something else
Well, it worked for me, even though it's Woody Allen Lite. Larry David channels his 'smart-ass jerk'-powers from Curb and then some, though the movie suffers a bit whenever he isn't on screen. The end was sweeter than expected and I can't disagree with the idea behind the film.
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