Did I see that?

Rating: Null/10 (12 December 1999)

One of those Woody Allen movies you're already in the process of forgetting before it's over. Sean Penn, with a poof of hair that suggests the David Levine cartoons of Preston Sturges, plays Emmett Ray, the world's second-greatest jazz guitarist (after Django Reinhardt), and an all around louse, egomaniac, idiot, clod, and king of bad taste. Samantha Morton is his lover--a mute laundress--and Uma Thurman is a worldly writer who marries him. The cast is nifty, and Woody Allen lingers on Emmett's guitar lovingly. (This is not, like Robert Altman's KANSAS CITY, a movie for connoisseurs only.) There's nothing unpleasant in the movie; it's just one of those super-extra-minor Woodies, like MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY, that force you to struggle to stay awake.