HOLLYWOOD, 20 September 2003 — In what would seem a vain pursuit of a younger audience, Woody Allen has recruited Jason Biggs and Christina Ricci to play first smitten then thwarted lovers in “Anything Else.’’ With the old master improbably casting himself as a paranoid, survivalist philosopher, this new tale of New York comes across as more twisted than humorous, a failed attempt to do something different while maintaining the Allen trademarks: Great jazz and trendy Manhattan locations.
Allen’s David Dobel and Biggs’ Jerry Falk are comedy writers who meet and talk in Central Park, giving the weakly titled “Anything Else’’ the feeling of an Athenian pastoral comedy. The rest of the film pays visits to hot spots like Isabella’s, where Jerry takes lunch with his manager, juicily played by Danny DeVito, or the Village Vanguard, where Jerry and Ricci’s Amanda groove on Diana Krall’s rendition of “It Could Happen to You.’’
Initially, Jerry and Amanda are hooked up with two other lovers, played by KaDee Strickland and Jimmy Fallon, that “Saturday Night Live’’ wiseguy-about-town. But the young comedy writer and the would-be singer-actress immediately feel irresistible mutual urges and soon find themselves shacking up at the Warwick Hotel. Strickland’s Brooke finds one long hair too many, and moves out of Jerry’s crowded digs, and Amanda adds her own possessions to the crammed apartment. Then her mother, raspingly played by an imperious Stockard Channing, arrives, followed by a spinet.
Not surprisingly, Amanda, acted by Ricci with a mix of kittenish seductiveness and neurotic fears about fat and a lack of talent, becomes frigid where Jerry is concerned. Naturally, Jerry confides in old Dobel, a 60-year-old school teacher trying to break into comedy writing. Initially, Dobel confines himself to quoting such great 20th century thinkers as Henny Youngman. Then he becomes deeper, expressing his fears of a new rise of Nazism and taking his protege out to New Jersey, to buy him a rifle and survival tools such as a floating flashlight. Allen even throws in an Auschwitz joke. It is all quite disturbing, even embarrassing.
Ricci shapes an edged, sharp complex performance of a spoiled Park Avenue daughter, even when she is draped on a chair, posing provocatively in sheer undies. Channing underlines part of Amanda’s problems as her liberated, unhappy mother, fleeing a physician husband to attempt a career as a chanteuse (with material written by by poor Jerry, driven from his writing chamber). Channing, at the piano, does a touching job with “There’ll Be Another Spring,’’ but the Algonquin will probably not beckon.
Biggs can only attempt a feeble stab at the Allen style, and comes off sounding like a second-rate Matthew Broderick imitator. He did much better on Broadway in “The Graduate.’’ Allen himself seems to be straining, perhaps aware that he has written an impossible role for himself. Of the men, only DeVito acquits himself impressively. His Harvey, a loudmouth who lives with his ancient mother and who works in metaphors involving men’s suit, shifts from a cocky sell to chummy lunches at Isabella’s to a screaming fit and heart attack at that West Side watering hole.
Stylistically, Allen retains his savvy. As photographed by Darius Khondji, the sequences in Central Park range from sunnily idyllic to darkly menacing. And the music, mostly by Billie Holiday and Lester Young, again demonstrates Allen’s impeccable taste. But “Anything Else’’ represents a further slippage in one of the great talents in modern American film. There was little laughter at a recent press screening, and even those who hated “Hollywood Ending’’ would have to admit that a blind Woodman was funnier than a crazy little guy with a house full of guns.
