Anything Else (2003) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Anything Else is Woody Allen's latest effort, his attempt to pass the torch to a new generation of Manhattan neurotics. In fact, it is very similar to Annie Hall in many ways, except that this time the Woodman has promoted himself to the position of Neurotic Emeritus, and has passed the official role of Leading Romantic Nebbish to Jason Biggs, the kid from the American Pie movies.

There is one other difference between this and the earlier film. Annie Hall kept us wondering whether Woody and his neurotic New York princess would end up as a couple. If I remember right, we wondered the same thing about the real-life Woody and his co-star Diane Keaton at the time. It was a real romantic comedy, albeit an eccentric one with a different kind of ending from the one we are accustomed to in romantic comedies. In this film, however, it is clear that the princess is just screwing Our Hero over - cheating on him with a variety of lovers while using him to provide room and board for her mother. That is an important distinction between the dynamics of the two films, because in Annie Hall we not only wonder whether they will make it, but we secretly root for them, because Annie is a nice person at her core, even if she is high-maintenance.

Neither is the romantic male lead in this film as likeable as former Allen characters. In this film, we want to reach through the screen, grab him by the collar, and tell him that there are about a million eligible women in the New York area, about a third of whom would love to have him as their lover and would bring him more peace of mind than his existing relationship. In fact, we lose respect for Our Hero when he dumps just such a "nice girl" at the beginning of the film. He lies to her and essentially throws her out in the cold so that he can take up in a doomed relationship with his manipulative and troubled - but sexy - Christina Ricci, under the pretext of "love at first sight". That action strips away our sympathy for him, turning him from a nebbish into a manipulator, and the Ricci character is even more manipulative, to a point where she is completely unsympathetic. So why do we care if they ever get together? In fact, we just want to tell him to stop being an asshole to nice people who care for him, and to dump this silly bitch before she ruins his life. The dramatic arc of the film centers around how long it will take for the couple to agree to a break-up, and which of them will instigate it.

Distilling the film to its essence, the audience is left watching two unsympathetic characters break up inevitably. That isn't much to hang a film on, is it? It probably wouldn't work at all except that Jason Biggs manages to borrow heavily against his substantial personal "everyman" reserve to evoke our sympathy, so we have some identification with him even after he lies to and mistreats the nice girl who cares for him.

I like Woody Allen's movies as pleasant time-killers, and this one is one of the best of the last decade, but I no longer look forward to the next Woody Allen movie, my friends no longer discuss what he's working on next, and we now greet the arrival of a new Woody Allen project with yawns.

I might never even have noticed this film at all if it had been directed by anyone else. While providing light entertainment, it is also repetitive, and completely lacking in daring. It wasn't noticed by many other people even with Woody's name attached, maxxing out at less than four million at the box office.