"You cannot be serious"

Rating: 6/10 (15 January 2006)

Woody Allen relocates to London but based on this evidence, he wrote the screenplay on the plane. Had he waited until landing and spent a little time in good 'ol Londoninium, he might had the chance to listen to how we speak over here. As it is you've got a movie with some of the most stilted, turgidly written and, curiously for Allen, witless dialogue you'll ever hear and absolute murder on the ears for real Londoners. Allen (Daddy to his wife) has always rolled naked in language like a sunbathing hippo in mud but the wordy script, stuffed into the misshapen mouths of 'the English upper class' is awkwardly spewed out over two hours, more you suspect out of reverence to the director who no-one wanted to offend with a factual denunciation of its sheer wooden quality, so the cast look stagestruck - a group of people lifelessly reciting their lines like schoolchildren forced to read Shakespeare out loud in class. You've never heard anyone speak the way these people do - okay this is what used to be known as the Ruling class and they're an odd bunch as we know but do they really talk like the King addressing the nation on BBC radio circa 1935? The casting of Myers is also unusual. We're asked to believe that this cut-glass Englishman is in fact a poor Irishman who's pulled himself up through his Tennis skills. Woody Allen himself sounds more Irish than Reece-Myers. Occasionally Match Point engages. As the affair between Myers and Johansson deepens so does the material but as it all pans out the twists in the story become signposted far in advance and it progressively becomes less plausible until finally, with Johansson murdered and Myers looking as though he'll get away with it, Allen strays into an middling episode of Columbo but without the great man himself to pick apart the killer's poorly conceived plot. Its also in the denouement that Allen's misogyny rears its ugly, lecherous head. Johanson, like all women in these situations, pays for her intense sexuality that turned the poor mans head and potentially wrecked his marriage, with her life. Never mind that unlike say Glen Close in Fatal Attraction, she was groomed by the man in question and harassed until she gave in and who cares if Myers has lied to all parties throughout and acted with ruthless self-interest - he's a man and more importantly the Allen surrogate so its inconceivable that he'll be hauled into a police van by the hapless Rozzers and given a life sentence at Parkhurst. That audiences tend to sympathise with the men in these situations, some women mystifyingly included, is one of the great psychological conundrums of the cinematic experience. As I left the cinema in fact I heard two teenage girls ruminating on the fact that the genetically gifted Myers had got away it and saying that they were 'glad, weren't you?' Well no I wasn't - having sat through two hours of conversations with the new English who use phrases like "schmuk" and "I figured", I had hoped for at least the sight of Myers being lead to the gallows. So Match Point is a movie that oscillates between poorly performed melodrama and jaw-on-the-floor implausibility. The one moment that really is an ace is the scene in which Myers throws an incriminating ring into the Thames only for it to hit the rail and bounce back onto the pavement. The same action with the ball in Tennis would have Myers lose the point but ironically here it has the opposite effect as it's discovered by a drug addict who is later fingered for the Tennis Pro's spate of murders. The message is clear - sometimes what's generally accepted as wrong can, with a bit of luck, work to your advantage. One thinks of Woody and his young bride and shudders. Lucky for Mia Farrow the director doesn't own a rifle.