Contender For Worst Best Picture

Rating: 7/10 (12 June 2015)

Annie Hall, directed, written, and starring Woody Allen, begins as a witty, likable, and hilarious film that had me in tears during a few scenes. However, as the film grows on, it develops a certain tedium, and eventually becomes a redundant and repetitive film with an annoying lead performance.
Woody Allen starts off as a brilliantly written character, with tons of neurotic quirks that make him unique. Jewish jokes aside, his comedic performance was very charismatic. However, an hour into the film, I found myself annoyed by the sound of his voice, and the frequency he would complained about the most mundane of things. This is where the shift into tedium begins, because this whole time I was wishing the film would end so I would no longer have to hear him talking. The same here goes for Diane Keaton, who I loved at first, but I eventually grew annoyed with as time went on. And their insistence on being annoying could've been intentional, there's no denying that, but that doesn't make it any less annoying, and it doesn't stop Woody Allen from type- casting himself in his own movie.
One thing I can certainly compliment is the exquisite direction. I've always been a huge fan of long takes, making the feeling of the film more intimate, and this film features tons of those. There is a brilliant shot where, Woody and his friend are walking down the street, and we here them talking, but they're not yet in frame or just out of frame. As the shot and conversation continues, we see two individuals come down the street casually, and eventually we see this is Allen and his friend. The shot then continues and follows them where they're walking. It's brilliant, and in some scenes it even heightens the comedic value, especially in the scene when they're waiting in the line at the movie's with the film snob talking pretentiously behind them.
There's no doubt here that the writing here is also very well done, until the third act, because in typical comedy fashion, it brings in the dramatic plot that you don't care about,and drops nearly all of the jokes, making it even more tedious than it already was. But nonetheless, there's lots of hilarious chemistry between Keaton and Allen, especially in the lobster scene, which I found to be one of the most genuinely written in the film. The characters talk quickly too, so reading the Oscar-winning screenplay is only that much better for helping you catch all of the jokes you might have missed.
This film's winning of the Best Picture Oscar however emphasizes it's rather OK quality. Make no mistake, this is a well directed, well acted, and well written film until the third act comes in. But it's that third act that simply makes the movie OK. A bad ending is certainly worse than a bad beginning, because an audience member is more akin to remember a movie finishing bad, then starting good, and vice versa. This is a bit of a generic romcom the more I think about it, with a few artistic quirks. It's certainly not the worst Best Picture, that honor goes to either Driving Miss Daisy or Shakespeare in Love, but nonetheless, this is your typical overrated classic which people praise but don't watch.I recommend it to someone who's an Oscar completionist or somebody who just wants a quick laugh with an artistic edge, but anybody else, especially people who aren't already fans of Woody Allen, should stray away from this.