Match point...less (contains spoilers)

Rating: 2/10 (18 April 2006)

I have always been a bona fide Woody Allen fan, but I'm losing hope... This film is a mixture between "A place in the Sun" and Allen's own much superior "Crime and Misdemeanors", but it's got none of the raw edge and desperation of the first and even less of the humour noir of the second. It is set in London but (and I live in London) it does not at all look like it. The wealthy British family depicted is a gentile white upper class family, yet the son and daughter keep referring to their father as 'papa' which I believe is the norm in Jewish families but certainly out of place in this context. Apart from this, the family is so preposterously unbelievable, that they all seem to come out of some urban fairytale. The acting is appalling, especially Rhys-Meyers' and Johansson's, who seem to be suffering from toothache rather than swept away by passion. The fact that a tennis pro with the looks of Ryhs Meyers would love opera and succeed in the City is laughable and makes the characters played by Rock Hudson in the Sirk movies positively neorealistic! It's a horrible film, badly acted, and worst of all, going absolutely nowhere and with nothing to say that is real, insightful or even ironic. A total miss, Mr Allen.