So disappointing it made me angry

Rating: 2/10 (20 July 2008)

This movie is nothing but a "Crimes and misdemeanors" rip-off, lacking both the (relative) novelty and the fortunate casting of its precedent. If the decades of experience packed by Allen have to amount to this heap of trash, I think we better think twice before we raise and keep filmmakers in some arbitrary Olympus of cinema history. Good wine, as a notorious film character put it, may indeed age into vinegar. And vice versa: for one thing, Adrian Lyne, Richard Gere and Diane Lane have been epitomes of mediocrity for most of their careers, and yet, in all its modesty, "Unfaithful" is a fine example of correct, unpretentious film-making. Compared to this, the downward spiral of someone like Allen should motivate a revisionist and probably destructive study of most of the film industry of the 60s and 70s -- a study devoid of any sentimentalism or partisan considerations. Audiences were impressionable back then: granted. But they shouldn't be now. Especially since the mere idea of replacing Martin Landau, Jerry Orbach, Anjelica Huston, Alan Alda or Claire Bloom with such shallow and hardly engaging brats is a stupidity all its own.
Several questions come to mind:
1. Can't anyone realize, once and for all, that Woody Allen's pen ran out of ink a long time ago?
2. Can't anyone realize, once and for all, that Scarlett Johansson is neither a good actress nor the closest thing to a natural candidate for a "sex symbol"?
3. Can't anyone realize, once and for all, that Rhys-Meyers only stands as failure n. 23273 in the long list of failed attempts at occupying Stamp's or Caine's place?
4. Can't anyone realize, once and for all, that recycling past material "per se", with unreliable prime matter and haphazard attempts at renewal, is an empty ride and an exercise in futility?