"Polymorphously Perverse"....and One of the Best Romantic Comedies Ever

Rating: 10/10 (1 June 2006)

It's great to see how timeless this 1977 movie still is after nearly thirty years especially after seeing Woody Allen's more challenging later work in the interim. But nothing beats a perfectly written script (courtesy of Allen and frequent collaborator Marshall Brickman) and the undeniable chemistry between Allen and Diane Keaton in the title role. Scene for scene, it represents the most consistently engaging comedy Allen ever directed, and his wonderfully creative stream-of-consciousness narrative is filled to the brim with detours into flashbacks, animation, split-screens, fantasy scenes and speaking to the camera. It all blends into a movie that remains emotionally resonant and even bittersweet behind all the laughs.
There is little plot to speak of as it focuses on the evolving relationship between Alvy Singer, a successful stand-up comedian, and Annie Hall, an aspiring singer. Interspersed throughout are episodes in Alvy's angst-driven life - his shaky childhood next to the Coney Island roller-coaster, his desultory days as a comedy writer, his previous failures in relationships and marriages, his ongoing resistance to the West Coast. No longer playing just the romantic loser of "Play It Again, Sam", Allen is constantly kvetching in his search for intellectual fulfillment but finally finds his first true love in his diametric opposite, an unaffected, self-deprecating girl from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Their relationship is played out in clever episodes, none more so than their first meeting at a tennis game followed by Annie's reckless driving and a subtitled conversation on her terrace. It is really the contrast in their approach to life that brings them together and provides the impetus for their dissolution.
Whether she is playing herself or not, Keaton is an unadulterated joy even as her character sadly grows apart from Alvy. Allen is himself or at least his public persona and even manages a sense of unexpected pathos toward the end, especially when he desperately proposes marriage at the health food restaurant. There are so many memorable moments that it's difficult to choose a favorite - Marshall McLuhan at the movies, the lobsters, the sneeze into the cocaine, Christopher Walken's bit as Annie's headlight-obsessed brother Duane. A movie as perfect as this deserves a deluxe DVD treatment, but the 2000 release has simply a decent print transfer and unfortunately only the original trailer as an extra. The title of my review was actually the phrase Alvy used to describe to Annie her bodily pleasure in lovemaking.