Whatever Works

It sounds as though all the stars have aligned in some dazzling and fortuitous arrangement; Larry David playing Woody's Allen's onscreen alter-ego in the latter's return to American soil. The plot, too, sees the iconic director return to his pet preoccupations; Boris (Larry David), an academic and dedicated malcontent, finds an unlikely girlfriend in Melodie (Evan Rachel Wood), a young dull-witted runaway he discovers in the garbage; "a character out of Faulkner not unlike Benjy" as he ungallantly puts it. A series of romantic complications and neurotic direct addresses to camera soon follow. But the real trouble begins when the girl’s evangelical Mississippi parents (Patricia Clarkson and Ed Begley Jr.) arrive, having blown the family fortune searching for their daughter.
Mr. David enlivens Woody's musings with a sardonic brutality and the material – originally written for Zero Mostel during the seventies - feels more like a Proper Woody Allen script than, say, recent foreign outings Match Point, Cassandra's Dream and Vicki Cristina Barcelona. But the dusted off screenplay has not necessarily aged well; there are some excellent one-liners but they coalesce into more misogyny and elitism than contemporary audiences are accustomed to. Pitching Larry David against a moronic southern doll-girl hardly plays like a fair fight between the sexes. Like Manhattan – another dated project – one feels the film is an old fashioned apology for older gents chasing younger skirt; indeed, watching this new Woody Allen joint, it's impossible not to think of Wild Man Blues, Barbara Kopple’s documentary account of the director’s jazz career and the early days of his relationship with Soon Yi-Previn. Whatever Works is just too much information.