Annie Hall

**UP FRONT WARNING: I will not get into the allegations around Woody Allen or his personal life. While they are serious, and I do believe them to be true, I do not believe them to be relevant to this. I am reviewing art and the artist here, not the man.** Up to now, I'd never watched a Woody Allen movie. I never had the desire. I was an avid watcher of Siskel & Ebert back in the day, and the clips I saw on there never appealed to me. The nervous, neurotic humor seemed boring to me. But that was also back then. I'm much older now, and my tastes have evolved. As my wife and I decided to embark on a quest to watch every Best Picture winner, I knew I wouldn't be able to maintain the blockade, because of this movie. Now, after finally having watched a Woody Allen movie, I can speak to him and his movies with experiential data. And I hope, with all of my heart, that on this Best Picture winner journey, I've gotten the worst out of the way, because this movie was, without a doubt, one of the worst movies I have ever seen. By the end, I was choking on my own tongue for wanting to scream at the TV in blind, incoherent rage. Every problem this movie has, every one of them, leads back to one thing: the writing. It is not merely a problem of bad, inhuman dialogue, or a scattered narrative or the painful way the self-deprecating "humor" lands, although all of those are there, and we'll get to them. No, the crux of the matter, the still center upon which this wheel of self-absorbed shit revolves around, is the rampant egomania and tone-deaf wish fulfillment that is Woody Allen's writing. The entire narrative is told as a flashback from an Allen monologue. His character, Alvy, occasionally even breaks the fourth wall, either directly addressing the camera or doing so by way of addressing random people in the movie, to drop in his own narration. This means the entire movie is framed through his eyes. You know, a movie called ANNIE HALL. It is, if the title was to be believed, about a woman, but it is really about this narcissistic little prick's obsession with Annie (played by Diane Keaton). Annie is given no agency. Her choices, her thoughts, her hopes, her fears, everything is frames through Alvy, which means everything is biased against her. When they're arguing, she's shrill and uncompromising, and he's just being misunderstood. When she freezes him out in bed, she's cold and emotionally distant and "going through something", denying this poor sad sack the physical act of love. Even when she does try to assert herself, such as when she tells him how much she feels like he looks down on her for not being at his intellectual level, Alvy makes sure to prop up his arguments with "I'm just trying to encourage you to be more educated". See? Even though he thinks she's an idiot that needs tutoring, he's just suggesting adult education as an act of love! He's not a condescending gasbag! What a good person! As if this wasn't bad enough, Allen's writing doubles down by making Alvy, with no visible or inferable reason present whatsoever, an irresistible chick magnet. Despite being a short, balding, neurotic, self-loathing, angst-ridden, closed-minded, judgmental, obnoxious, elitist dick, he's able to get women like they're coming out of a vending machine. When he meets his first wife (in a flashback within a flashback, which ought to be a mortal filmmaking sin), she's a stage manager for a show; he, a "comedian", harangues and belittles her for being scheduled after another comedian. After treating her like crap for something she almost certainly didn't have a hand in doing, he demands a compliment as an ego boost before going on stage, and she says "I think you're cute". Great to see negging in action. He marries an upscale socialite-type after her, but seems to get mad when she won't have sex during a cocktail party they are hosting, a party he has abandoned to watch basketball. And during a temporary break-up with Annie, he sleeps with yet another woman that he meets at random. That's on top of the fact that this trollish turd of a human being is also sex-obsessed; he complains to his therapist that he and Annie "barely" have sex, which means "only" three times a week. He's constantly pawing at every woman he's with, gets extraordinarily petulant when he doesn't get his way, and in one scene, when there is a visible manifestation of Annie's mind wandering during sex because she's just placating him, he gets mad because she isn't giving him her body AND mind. Late in the movie, when he tries to win Annie back and she has to rebuff him three times in 90 seconds, he is aghast. He cannot believe his nagging and negging and smothering didn't work, and he condemns her for it. There is no moment in this movie where it isn't clear that Woody Allen has written himself a part where he gets to play the man he wishes he was: an irresistible sex god that can make women swoon and ovulate just by being in the same ZIP code. But Allen's writing isn't good enough to actually MAKE that character, because he has to also be himself, which leads to this dichotomy of an abusive, abrasive, manipulative, unpleasant, unappealing, garbage dump of a human being somehow being Aphroditus. I'm sure there's someone out there trying to justify the writing, saying Alvy is in the wrong. And to that I say, no, you're wrong. Go watch this excrement again, and tell me where, in any scene, ANYBODY AT ANY TIME challenges Alvy or holds him accountable for being who he is and doing what he does. IT. DOES. NOT. HAPPEN. ANYWHERE. Every argument is told through HIS viewpoint and casts him as the downtrodden hero being misunderstood these ungrateful, frigid women. He never realizes his mistakes. He never grows as a person, despite years passing in the narrative. If you think breaking up is the consequences of his actions, I'd counter that with HE JUST KEEPS FINDING MORE WOMEN TO SLEEP WITH HIM. If it weren't for the fact that he gets laid more than a porn star, this movie would be an incel's manifesto. Because of all this, nobody else is given ANYTHING in this movie, especially Diane Keaton. She's either a one-dimensional idealized girlfriend, or the cold, distant, moron that won't put out and doesn't understand Alvy. It isn't until Alvy's attempt to win back Annie in California where she is allowed any growth whatsoever ... but then here's the writing to rip it all away, as after telling Alvy New York City has nothing for her anymore and she's happy in California, she moves back. And in the final moments, when Allen is rehearsing actors for his first play, we see it is a recreation of that final break-up in California. Only Allen has taken the wish-fulfillment to meta levels, and has written Alvy to re-write his own life and get the girl, because Alvy has to win. Alvy must succeed at all costs. And if he doesn't, he still has to have the last word. I loathe this movie with every fiber of my being. I did not laugh once. I did not chuckle. I did not even smirk. I resent the hell out of Woody Allen turning himself into the world's most attractive man but giving himself zero attractive qualities, and then writing the women that revolve around him all the depth of a saltine cracker. I despise how Alvy is written as a manipulative, abusive jerk that nobody ever checks, nobody ever gives him what he deserves, and he constantly comes out better for it. I will never sit through another Allen movie again. I do not understand how this won an Oscar for Best Picture. I don't understand how this was even nominated, and I don't understand how anybody could ever find this funny. I am considering expanding my Bottom 10 list to just be all the half-star movies I've seen, so I can make sure this gutter trash is highlighted. I hope this is the worst my Best Picture winner journey gets.