Not much point

Rating: 2/10 (27 December 2005)

Woody Allen's luck-themed drama has drawn praise from the critics as the director's long-awaited "return to form". It could well be more accomplished than his recent output, but better does not mean good.
Match Point has quite an interesting premise: that luck, in the end, is more important than skill, faith or endeavour. But the film suffers from both a paucity of characterisation (especially around its charmless protagonist) and a slow-building plot.
Allen might have gotten away with one of these, but the double blow means that it is difficult to sustain interest in any of his somewhat bland characters (none of whom has anything interesting to say) during the unusually long 90-minute setup.
The majority of the plot is a simple love triangle. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is an inarticulate tennis coach who befriends his aristocratic client Tom (Matthew Goode), marries Tom's sister (Emily Mortimer) and has an affair with Tom's girlfriend (Scarlett Johansson). The fundamental problem is that although Rhys Meyers is quite handsome, he is so uncharismatic that there is no reason for the other characters, or indeed the audience, to be remotely interested in him.
The plot twists, when they do come, are interesting but hardly worth the wait. In the meantime we are left to ponder: a) Allen's decision to let his cast stumble over their lines; b) the touristy depiction of London in which Johansson's "cheap" flat is just around the corner from Bond Street; c) the oddity that is Johansson's mouth; and d) the desire to mutter "What a tosser" at Rhys Meyers's pathetic Sloaney aspirations.
You can't really blame the actors. Mortimer does very well in an unrewarding role and both Johansson and Goode are fine. Even Rhys Meyers has the excuse that Allen has written his protagonist as a villain from the start, never allowing him to build a connection with the audience even before he becomes deeply unsympathetic in the final act.
There are some good observations, but not nearly enough to rescue this drawn-out and occasionally stilted drama, which compares poorly with a feature-length episode of Inspector Morse.