Recycling

Rating: 6/10 (27 March 2006)

Match Point was one of very few movies from last year that I really wanted to see and could not wait for it to open. High praise from both the critics and the audience alike only contributed to my impatience. What did I get? Allen recycled one of his own earlier masterpieces, used only a drama part of it and created a good-looking movie with myriads of references to the works of literature and cinema that had told the same story much better than he did this time. What is fascinating, the earlier masterpiece that I've mentioned above is twenty minutes shorter than "Match Point" but it had said so much more with such power that Allen himself was not able to recreate. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is not Martin Landau and Scarlet Johansson is not Angelica Huston. It is nothing wrong to borrow from himself but nothing original or compelling came from "Match Point". I enjoyed his silly "Scoop" and his dramedic "Melinda & Melinda" much better than his almost universally proclaimed as masterpiece "Match Point". I said once and I am repeating that Allen makes good, very good and excellent films. Let's say that I prefer his combination of drama and comedy to pure drama. There have been many great dramas but "Crimes and Misdemeanors" is beyond great, it is unique.
****A spoiler...sort of:******
More than once I've seen the same scene in the movies lately - the main character reads a Dostoyevsky's novel in an opening scene - gives you a very good idea what to expect by the end.