Amusingly Awful Romance at Its Finest

Rating: 9/10 (27 April 2006)

In typical Woody Allen style, this film is a comment on pretentious New York City inhabitants, fake and materialistic Hollywood-ites, and neurotic love relationships. Alvy is a somewhat overly intelligent, somewhat pompous, incredibly neurotic and slightly depressed comic. Annie is a woman who only gets pleasure out of smoking pot, is not too intelligent, and is too shy and nervous for her own good. Having these two characters fall in love seems slightly insane in itself, but then again, that's what Woody Allen was going for with this film. In many ways, this film could be seen as kind of a comment on how film portrays romancehow unrealistic romantic relationships had been portrayed by Hollywood and how the unhappy ending is usually the more prevalent in reality.
California (more specifically Hollywood and L.A) in this film is portrayed as a place full of overly tan, vanity obsessed, materialistic celebrities and their agents. Alvy, being the model New Yorker, hates California. Some of the most amusing lines in the film are between Alvy and Annie concerning the others' hatred for the two cities. Alvy's opinions on L.A all seem to hold up, however, so do Annie's opinions on New York. They're entirely polarized cities and the fact that Alvy and Annie don't choose the same city as their city of preference only emphasizes their differences even more. These two people are polar opposites, just like L.A. and New Yorkthey don't belong together. Annie and Alvy are not the type of couple that Hollywood usually had fun portraying. They are not the Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett couple from Pride and Prejudice, they are not Romeo and Juliet, they are two people who are completely wrong for each other and know it but somehow can't seem to figure it out. Every time they break up, they fall deeper into their depression because it's another failed relationship, another thing they couldn't make work. They're constantly bickering and fighting, and it doesn't really seem like love anymore after a certain point. It's the kind of love that only two mentally unstable and off base people can understand (and considering Allen's real life love situations, it becomes obvious that he is one of those people). This film is re-defining romance, re-defining how people look at relationships. It doesn't work out for Annie and Alvy in the end, and they both seem to be slightly okay with it. That's how things would have worked out for them in real life, and that's what Allen wanted to portray. If he had been a conventional Hollywood director with classic notions of grandeur and romance, then he would have had them live happily ever after. It's refreshing, for once, for the audience to figure out that not everyone gets that. Not all romances end with a ride off into the sunset.
Annie Hall is also a critique of American culture and the elite intelligencia. Alvy and most of his acquaintances in New York are the kind of cynical and judgmental people who are so intelligent that it makes everyone else of moderate intelligence seem like morons and scum. Alvy (even as a child, as we see in multiple flashbacks) has very high standards for people he would consider worthy of being able to share their opinions. One of the most humorous scenes in the film is when he and Annie are in the line to see a film about Nazi Germany and WWII and there is a pretentious man in line behind him spewing off his opinions on directors. When Alvy confronts him about his seemingly terribly wrong opinions, he pulls out one of the directors to back him up. Alvy is the standard that the audience is supposed to hold everyone else up against. He is a neurotic man who never has nothing to say and is usually able to voice his opinion in a witty manner. The irony of this film is its greatest feature. The depressive and cynical comic, who is too into himself to give anyone else the time of day, meets and falls in love with an unintelligent and somewhat boring girl from the mid west who would usually do nothing for him. How could it not end up amusingly awful? Woody Allen is truly at his finest in this film.