Return to PREDICTABLE form

Rating: 5/10 (7 January 2006)

Please--it's amazing how critics can dictate the public response to a movie. Seriously, how else to account for some of the wildly overrated praise this movie is getting? It's not awful, but it certainly isn't great either. There's little in this film that we haven't seen time and time again. And as for the Woody Allen, well, he did this material in a much stronger, more persuasive fashion with Crimes & Misdemeanors. As a friend of mine said, it's "real estate porn" and not much else. I will say the first 30-40 minutes are great but then it dovetails into stale territory (and the film is WAY too long). People may forgive him for the past decade's worth of work. I, however, am still waiting for that return to form (masterpiece? surely you jest).