This is NOT Woody Allen

Rating: 1/10 (9 January 2008)

I have never written a comment on a movie site before because I'm a great believer in the personal relationship between a piece of cinema and a viewer.
But having seen Match Point last night, I'm here to express a kind of horror I never thought I would get from a Woody Allen movie
I knew there would be no comedy, but I did not expect to see every single rule in the world of dialogue-driven drama to be trampled on in such a crass, juvenile, my-first-film-studies- project kind of way.
Woody Allen expresses emotion, creates suspense, exudes meaning  he DOES NOT SPELL THEM OUT!
I couldn't believe I was hearing lines such as 'I'm so anxious'. No, in movies, you show you're anxious, you don't say it dammit. And how many times did we have to have the details of the burglary spelled out to us? And would someone as fesisty as Scarlet's character really say 'Why can't I have the baby?' Every action and emotion had to be voiced and confirmed just in case the viewer didn't get it!
And what was there to get? A thoroughly unlikable protagonist devoid of the charm of Allen's usual protagonists that make the viewer relate and feel for him, followed his lust and pursued his goals and then had to choose between a secure future with his rich wife and a girl he used for sex for a bit. Big deal. It happens to people all the time. Especially when the girl in question is a broken figure like Scarlet's character as opposed to a genuine threat like, say, Glen Close in Fatal Attraction.
And more importantly, people know what they'd do in this kind of predicament precisely because this situation is so common  be nasty to her and she'll just go back to America again - there are plenty of ways to let your mistress down, and that does NOT include going for the shot gun!
There was no great love between the two characters (the sex scenes are so old man's fantasy  in the rain, ripping her top off, baby lotion and blindfolded by a tie for god's sake), no tension (if you didn't see Scarlet would get pregnant, you should be ashamed of yourself) and the incidental characters worked as nothing more than warm props  unthinkable in Woody Allen films where the small characters always make the big picture.
The film is called Match Point. Why? There are so many tennis analogies to be played on here  it doesn't have to be as profound as the way chess is used in Seventh Seal - but there was no one-upmanship (there could have, should have been between the two men), no showdown, no comeback  just luck. And boy did he drive that point home. If I'm ever insane enough to watch this movie again, I swear I'll need to borrow all your fingers to count how many times the word LUCK was driven down our throat.
You can't script a movie based purely on luck, especially when the events (and the quick shift that saw months and years go by without anyone changing their haircuts was ridiculous) relied on pure luck and not design time and time again.
And why on earth did everyone have crisp, clear-cut English accents? Even the doorman for god's sake. This is an American's understanding of what all British people are like, with clichés so stereotypical it makes the watcher violent. I just can't believe that American is Woody Allen.
Someone please tell me the real truth is Scarlet Johannsen really wrote this and he agreed to put his name to it because he fancies her.
For the love of god