What happens when upper classes start mixing with the help

Rating: 4/10 (14 August 2006)

A nicely produced, good-looking movie, but there's no earthly reason for it to be a Woody Allen movie. There's no wit or humor within a mile of this dreary, moralistic ripoff of The Talented Mr. Ripley - and Patricia Highsmith had already said it all much better (before it got dumbed down in Matt Damon's climactic writhing histrionics) - and what's the point of watching a Woody Allen movie if it doesn't let you so much as crack a smile, never mind give you a clever line or a dozen that you'd be inspired to memorize and apply to general life circumstances, the way Woody Allen used to write? Not one of the characters in Match Point could possibly be less interesting, appealing, or sympathetic. Woody Allen's growing, embarrassing obsession with Scarlett Johanssen notwithstanding, she's just an emergency backup Charlize Theron, 15 years younger, without Theron's experience and range as an actress and her mature sex appeal as a woman. Since Match Point also rehashes Woody's old pseudophilosophical ruminations of Crimes and Misdemeanors, I wish I could say watch Crimes and Misdemeanors instead, but I wouldn't wish that one on anybody either. No, you just can't beat Woody Allen's "early, funny ones." Try as he may, his attempts at depth do nothing but sink like a rock - and drag the audience down with them, into the mire of pompousness and disturbingly shallow moralizing.