Unique, delightful, funny--with an underlying, sad truth

Rating: 10/10 (7 September 2011)

This is an unusual but very entertaining film.
It frequently flouts customary movie rules: for example, the characters often break "the fourth wall" and confide directly to the camera (we, the audience) their thoughts or have subtitles on the screen telling us what they're really thinking. In one brief scene while standing in line waiting to get in to a movie, Woody gets in an argument with a man just behind him, a professor proclaiming his views; so Woody summons a world famous expert (Marshall MacLuhan, not a part of the narrative otherwise) to make a brief appearance in support of Woody's opposing views. Plus MANY other fun "floutings."
I completed a 5+ year psychoanalysis (as did many of my colleagues in Topeka in that era--it helped our advancements as well as our psyches) and this film pokes gentle fun at analysis, analysts, and clichés of that therapeutic process. One of my colleagues who viewed it with us, a close friend and an analyst, rated it 8/10 while I give it a 10/10. All the non-shrink others viewing it averaged in the 7-8/10 range. (FWIW, in IMDb's demographic ratings (q.v.), males consistently rate it slightly higher than females, regardless of age.)
Woody, in a brief prequel, speaks to us (as the comedian, Alvy Singer, his film character, but really consistent with and little different than almost every neurotic character Woody's played). In this, he repeats Groucho Marx's famous retort on being offered membership in the very exclusive Friars' Club: 'I refuse to belong to any club that would have a person like me as a member.'
Similarly (in my therapy experience), people who've never experienced (or never experienced enough of) things vitally important to them--such as acceptance, loving and being loved in return--often continually seek it out but then, just when it's in reach or, somewhat soon after it's grasped, manage to push it away.
It's as if, never having received it, it's okay and VERY important to PURSUE it but NOT okay to actually possess or maintain it.
IMO, they're much like the circus clowns with the big shoes, repetitively trying to pick up some desired object from the floor, but who--just before grasping it--always kicks it farther away. (Or, sometimes, they CAN find and savor it but typically only in those relationships that remain illegal, clandestine, or forbidden. The marriage of Woody with Soon-Yi in 1997 is probably an excellent example of this on both sides.)
That searching, pursuing, and typical disappointment is the underlying plot of "Annie Hall" but with lots of jokes, laughs, and chuckles spread like oodles of whipped cream with sprinkles over this underlying sad truth.
DELIGHTFUL!! Much fun -- MUCH truth.