Not a waste, but a rubbish plot.

Rating: 4/10 (21 August 2006)

I decided to watch it because Scarlett Johansson is in it, who, to me, doubtlessly is one of the most talented actresses of this decade. And the film started as always: a nice, warm romantic comedy, slightly drama, set in the gorgeous London. Tagging along with the story lines, Nola having a semi-true relationship with Tom, and Chris being with Chloe, I immediately realized I had landed the completely straight version of "Imagine me and you" which, according to most people, had a great story line and ended terrificly and romantic.
Straight up until the point when the affair between Nola and Chris started to progress and got much more intense. It almost seemed like Naomi Watts after waking up in "Mulholland Dr." Now, the plot change that I REALLY didn't get is when Chris got the gun out of his bag and shot the neighbor and Nola straight in the face.
My friends and I all came to the conclusion that Chris had fallen asleep in the country side after the bit when he had sex with Nola, and that it was all just a bad dream among his perfect rich life (that's right, COMPLETELY unpredictable and, to be honest, a little rubbish).
Getting all the way to the end, we all wondered what was going to happen: was it a dream? was it a joke? was it Mulholland Drive after all? I was quite a bit shocked when I saw the credits rolling up on the black screen without having even seen at least a trial or so. I'm almost sorry to say this, since Woody Allen usually is a genius, but this plot is THE WORST I've seen in my entire life. There's absolutely no sign of what it is: a comedy, a drama, a thriller. It all mixes up and ends without the viewer knowing anything about the future developments. I'm actually waiting for a sequel to come out to make up for the open ending and all the bad personality twists. The fact that Nola dies in the middle of the film, while she really is one of the bigger parts, as she's in an affair, being pregnant, being depressed, the viewer seeing all of this, is probably the thing that I keep tripping over when thinking about this.
Though this film wasn't a total waste to watch. The acting was superb. Scarlett was amazing, so were Jonathan and the rest of the cast. Strong signs of emotion, great looks. After an hour I just couldn't wait for Chris to break up with Chloe, who kept getting more and more annoying. Another thing that I really appreciated was the opera music playing a slightly unnoticeable but (if you paid attention to it) strong part in the film. I'm definitely going out to get the soundtrack if it's available. I also thought it was shot beautifully. The London estate was great, so was Nola's apartment and the big office building. The light and amazing just kept being lovely.
I think Allen could've done a much better job at keeping the script going in one direction instead of five.