HOLLYWOOD ENDING (Woody Allen, 2002) R

Reviewed: May 4, 2002

All the reviews seem to start with sentences like these: "It's as sad and painful to report as it is to experience..." -The Los Angeles "It grieves me to say this. Allen's predicament gives me no comfort whatsoever." -Jeffrey Wells "This is one of the most unpleasant reviews I’ve ever had to write." -David Poland "...I realized, sad as it is to say.." -Entertainment Weekly

You know what, guys? Save it. Save your fucking pathetic pity/sympathy. I know Woody Allen doesn't need it and I'd bet the farm he certainly doesn't want it. Stop trying to justify your maligning and bathe your comments and yourself in angelic light, like you're all some kind of martyrs kindly pouncing down and offering the crucial assistance Woody needs to save his career from annihilation. Stop insinuating that Hollywood Ending is Allen's casket, and now he's got one foot in the grave.

I am ecstatic to report Hollywood Ending is a great film. I am ecstatic to report Hollywood Ending proves Woody Allen is still at the top of his filmmaking game. If you have any heart you will allow it to work its magic on you, you will give yourself over to the film and reap the many rewards Allen has in store.

Let's get some of the major complaints out of the way that critics never fail to mention. Yes, it's a little unbelievable that Woody Allen, at sixty-six, continues romancing such young girls in his films. In Hollywood Ending, it's the thirty-six year old Tea Leoni and the thirty-three year old Debra Messing (although this romance is clearly based on Messing using Allen's character to advance her career and thus is plausible). But dear critics-- GET PAST IT. It never bothered me for a moment in Hollywood Ending because of two primary reasons. 1) Tea Leoni has recently been quoted in the press talking about how great a kisser Woody is and how attracted she is to funny, bright men like him (comments similar to the ones Elizabeth Shue, Allen's Deconstructing Harry costar, has made in the past). 2) Woody, in real-life, is married to a woman thirty-five years younger than him. If you don't believe Woody would be able to realistically get the young girls in his films... if it disturbs you... too fucking bad. Deal with it. Shut the fuck up. Don't be so superficial. As Woody Allen famously said and his character says in Hollywood Ending, the heart wants what it wants. Anything's fair game. Especially in a movie.

Woody Allen has always been one of my top five favorite filmmakers, but I don't think I enter the theater eager to view his latest in the same mindset as other fans. See I don't go into Woody Allen expecting to laugh my ass off. I think that'd be inappropriate. My reasons are twofold... one, I've always thought that Woody Allen's comedy is not that laugh-out-loud funny like say Wes Anderson's or the Coen Brothers' is to me. Woody Allen's comedy has been more one of leave a big, fat fucking smile plastered across your face for the whole film funny. Maybe cause it's so built on gags and punch-lines which I've always just inherently not been that big a fan of. I don't tell jokes. I don't like to listen to jokes. I think most standup comedy is repulsive. But more likely it's because I find so much depth in Allen's work--far past and deeper than just the comedy--that I often don't even think to laugh cause I'm too busy contemplating the characters. I'm too busy wrapped up in one of their plights or I'm moved by one of them in unexpected ways. And this is exactly how I found myself during Hollywood Ending.

Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly writes: "Somewhere in the middle of Woody Allen's Hollywood Ending, I watched Woody giving the same neurotic-shnook performance as the ''Woody Allen character'' that he has given for close to 35 years, and I realized, sad as it is to say, that I would be perfectly happy if I never saw him give that performance again."

Wrong! Completely wrong! Owen either saw a different Hollywood Ending than me or he's a blind and shallow curmudgeon. I don't wanna hear anyone dismiss Allen's performance in Hollywood Ending as the same thing he's done for his whole career. That's so damn convenient and it's so fucking incorrect. It proves a fundamental ignorance about Allen's career. See in Hollywood Ending, Woody plays Val Waxman, a washed-up movie director and he is the angriest, most bitter character Woody Allen's ever played. I point directly to the scene in which Allen meets Tea Leoni (playing a movie executive who used to be married to Allen, but left him to marry a rich Studio Head simpleton) at a restaurant, ostensibly to discuss the $60 million film The City That Never Sleeps (which Waxman's just been hired to direct and which will potentially revive his career).

Here is a remarkable scene--shot in typical Allen fashion in mostly unbroken masters--where Allen allows himself to let loose. I mean he fucking explodes, the intense intense hatred and anger and pain that's built up in him for all the time since Leoni walked out on him finally busting free. If Hollywood Ending was a different Woody Allen film this scene could have been tweaked with just a few tiny, tiny adjustments into a shattering dramatic scene. Allen swings back and forth from being kind to Leoni and ready to discuss the The City That Never Sleeps to pure, unadulterated fury. Spitting, unable to even look Leoni right in the face. I was hardly laughing because I was caught helplessly in the throes of Allen's suffering, the bile overpowering him. Amazing stuff.

A lot of critics have written comments like Elvis Mitchell's in The New York Times: "In a gruesome way, Hollywood Ending is evocative of Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, which felt like a movie made by a man who hadn't been outside in 30 years." Which is extremely ironic to me, because I think they just got their wavelengths crossed. See, Hollywood Ending plays nothing like what Mitchell described. But I think the confusion lies in the fact that Allen's character Val Waxman seems like he hasn't been outside in 30 years. This difference is obviously crucial and should be apparent to anyone with half a brain.

Allow me to pause for a caveat: Allen beats the point over the head that Waxman is metaphorically blind due to his estrangement from his son. The son angle is the only part of the film I found (while amusing in and of itself) to be very weak and unnecessary and I wish was cut. Because it feels sudden and contrived and too easy a way out. Without that subplot I think the film would have been even more powerful and it would have (hopefully) forced all the critics bashing the film without reserve to work harder. There is a beautiful shot towards the end of Hollywood Ending. Allen, in the midst of the medical condition the fucking piece of shit trailers for Hollywood Ending so unfortunately spoil, is in a meeting with Treat Williams (the previously mentioned Studio Head Lug, whom Tea Leoni's character left Allen for). They're in a multi-room suite and Allen's trying to follow Treat from one room of the suite to another. Allen fumbles. He's standing in the middle of the room, disorientated. Now no one else is in the frame. And Allen holds this shot of himself. A shot of a lost, lost man with no idea where to go. That's Val Waxman. That's not Woody Allen. Woody Allen knows exactly to go-- always has for his whole career, always will. Take note Elvis Mitchell.

Back to the comedy angle: Despite everything I said, or maybe because of it, because my expectations weren't to be rolling around in the aisle, because there's real emotion in this film, I think Hollywood Ending is very funny. Very very funny. One of Allen's funniest films in awhile. The scene I just discussed also contains huge, huge laughs. No point in elaborating. Either you laugh or you don't. I did. Hard.

Onto another point of frequent critical contention: What Allen's inadvertently done with his outrageously inspired midway plot twist (shame on all the trailers for giving it away! shame on them! I would have loved nothing more than being able to see the twist fresh! it should absolutely not be spoiled!) is set the critics up for disappointment. See, Allen's idea is so brilliant and so ripe with possibilities that it elevates the quality of his film to a level that a lot of critics felt the film ultimately couldn't deliver on. Alright you're gonna make him [blank] (I refuse to blatantly spoil the twist)?! Then show us some of the most biting satire we've ever seen!

Well that's an unfair expectation. What the critics fail to understand is that Allen is not interested in full-blown satire here. Hollywood Ending isn't a tell-all expose about the seamy underbelly of show business. Satire involves a high amount of cynicism that usually isn't present in Allen's work. There's a strong humanistic undercurrent to almost all of Allen's films instead, and it's that humanity that takes Hollywood Ending and makes it truly great. Critics want Woody to have made a Hollywood satire like The Player, caustic and biting and fierce and cynical as all hell, but Allen is not interested in anything of the sort. Allen comedies are often low-key like Hollywood Ending, but they're never disposable. They're just after something different; Allen's comedy reminds me of the beautiful jazz that always plays over his films' opening credits. Freewheeling, seemingly innocuous... but beautiful. The flip side is a lot of critics simply feel Allen's conceit is too far-fetched to be believed at all. Well fuck 'em. They have no imagination. Apparently they want to keep having to review run-of-the-mill, safe crap. Good, let them drown in their self-inflicted dung heaps.

I love that Allen never makes Treat Williams into a mean, smarmy, obnoxious guy as The Player would have done (and basically did in the form of Peter Gallagher). I love that we actually believe that Tea Leoni would want to be his wife--he's a really nice guy--but how it's also still evident why she would want to leave him. Tea Leoni... rules. Debra Messing... rules. George Hamilton, who some people have expressed disappointment over not getting to do more, rules. And he rules precisely because he didn't get to do more. Having George Hamilton playing the yes man who just stands around and tries to look important is genius. Here's a guy who's just funny to look at, and who looking at you'd probably think is so important, that it's even funnier just to see him be passive. Mark Rydell as Val Waxman's agent... rules. Barney Cheng as the translator is fucking hilarious. But he's hilarious because he seems like such a bad actor (I could never quite decide if he was). It's like he's not even attempting to play a role, and so it kinda feels half real and half surreal. But fucking hilarious all the while.

One of the things I enjoyed most about Hollywood Ending is how self-reflexive it is, the only Woody Allen film besides Stardust Memories to directly comment and hit on Woody Allen the filmmaker as well as Woody Allen the human. All the way from Val Waxman's preference to use foreign DPs (speaking of which, Hollywood Ending's shot by a first-time Allen collaborator Wedigo von Schultzendorff and it is gorgeous! I pray Allen sticks with this guy.) to his extreme popularity in France to his refusal to shoot coverage to his aforementioned stating that the heart wants it wants -- it's all Allen making fun of himself. You gotta be familiar with Allen to get these jokes, but I am, so I did. If you're not... too bad. Go buy every Allen movie on DVD. And I'll envy your ability to experience all that glory anew.

I love the ending of Hollywood Ending. It's so perfect. At a time when I constantly complain about how no one knows how to end a film these days, it's incredibly reassuring to know that at least Woody Allen still does. There's hope yet. (note: I suggest that all the critics who didn't believe The City That Never Sleeps could have wound up so terrible, rewatch the ending. They obviously fell asleep the first time around and missed important information.)

When you write and direct 33 films, everyone's gonna have different favorites. Everyone's gonna disagree, everyone's rankings are gonna be unique, no way around it. Personally, I'm not a big fan of Allen's last two movies, Small Time Crooks and The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. They're fun trifles but don't compare to the greatness of a Hollywood Ending. Yet the same critics who don't like Hollywood Ending throw words like "wonderful" around to describe Small Time Crooks. It's all enough to make me wanna give up. People are gonna like what they like. Allen's been writing and directing a movie a year since his career began. This is the pace at which Annie Hall and Manhattan and Crimes and Misdemeanors and Hannah and Her Sisters were all made. This is the pace at which Allen will continue at until he's dead (he says he has no plans to retire), despite what his heartless critics predict.

So I'm gonna let go and end this review with a quote from a nameless, faceless woman that made me feel good. A stranger in my audience who summed up my feelings so perfectly and made me smile. As the credits on Hollywood Ending began to roll, she simply said: "Now that was a GOOOOOOOOOOD movie!"

Right on.

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