Woody Allen begins to grow up one of his best

Rating: Null/10 (30 January 2002)

A young comedian (Alvy Singer) has just lost his girlfriend, Annie and can't work out what happened. He goes back through his past in one long flashback to try and work out why and where it all went wrong.
Woody Allen's career started out making films that were slapstick mixed with surreal humour. He later moved to making more witty films that sought greater characterisation. The missing link in this was Annie Hall - a film that effortlessly mixes the two. The story is essentially a romance, but it spans back to Singers' childhood to weave a background for him.
The way Allen links all the flashbacks is very clever - most have a link in terms of dialogue etc so that the narrative isn't so iffy. The various tricks he uses are very imaginative as well - people's thoughts are shown in subtitles, Singer gets solves a cinema queue fight in a very novel way and at one point, to demonstrate how he makes the wrong choices in love, the film turns to a Snow White cartoon.
Allen is great in the character he has played so many times. His writing is excellent - clever mix of wit and surreal humour and his direction is faultless. Keaton is excellent and very familiar with working with Allen. The support cast is excellent and is full of cameos (from famous faces and faces that later became famous) including Paul Simon, Shelley Duval, Christopher Walken, Sigourney Weaver, Beverly D'Angelo and Jeff Goldblum (`I've forgotten my mantra').
Allen's best ever mix of his standup humour and his more adult character pieces.