Woody, go a different direction, like Manhattan.

Rating: 1/10 (30 January 2006)

I'd read some good reviews for Allen's new film and even seen a few friends who mildly suggested it. I was not prepared for the flat, slow, boring, by the numbers script, that Allen lays out in Match Point.
It's as if a guy suddenly decided one day to write a show about 'rich people', but had never met one outside of a drawing room comedy. Allen simply has no interest in a film noir or erotic thriller or whatever you wish to call this trifle. The lighting is never moody, on the other hand, it's bright and sharply lit. The tension is certainly lacking in the acting. It all seems to be happening on a bad, old TV show. Wow are some people jumping up and down about the film? I think maybe the fact that Allen tells a story, albeit a very structured, limp one that he has no feeling for. It remeinds me of Kubrick's last film, Eyes Wide Shut. Kubrick couldn't or wouldn't shoot in NY, so he just built in the UK. Allen goes to the UK, but he might as well have stayed in NY. It's a crazy movie. The audience is always nine steps ahead of the doddering characters. What exactly is Brian Cox playing? He got rich by constantly giving away his money and having zero ability to gauge character? It's like a character in an earlier, funnier Allen film, suddenly forced to play it straight. In fact, the whole movie is like that, and wow, what a letdown that is.
Allen was once one of the funniest men to ever make a movie. Now, like so many other directors, he's just plodding along, making dopey cardboard ones.