Dull, Prententious ... Classic Latter-Day Woody Allen

Rating: Null/10 (15 January 2006)

First of all, I'm sick of WA's obsession with upper-class people and the life he thinks they should lead. As is typical in his movies, the characters in MP exist in some weird never-never land untouched by popular culture. Here we have a group of 4 affluent urban people in their 20's, but none of them ever go to a club, watch a football match, listen to music less than 100 years old or, apparently, watch television or go to movies that aren't French. Even the bars and restaurants they frequent are stuffy rather than trendy and modern.
It's not that I disdain high culture or particularly love modern pop culture or trendiness - often the reverse; but, c'mon on, nobody under 50 nowadays leads this rarified a life, let alone a group of young, wealthy, pretty Londoners. It makes the characters less believable and less sympathetic to portray them as being so remote from the cultural universe the rest of us inhabit.
Secondly, Chris' character is flat and uninteresting because we don't know about enough about him to understand or care about his motives. If he was a poor boy, how did he come by the posh accent? (If that is indeed a posh accent; JRM's mode of speech was so stilted it was hard to tell.) Is it put on? Has he always been a climber, aiming to marry a rich girl, or did he just happen to fall into the company of these rich people and like what he found? Who cares? If WA was trying a make a point or build a story around class differences, he failed - there is not enough conflict and contract between the characters to work on that level.
Overall, although Match Point was pretty look at, by the last half-hour I was peering at my watch, anxious to get out.