Exhausted and Needing a Nap

Rating: Null/10 (16 September 2001)

Or at least that's how Woody Allen seems to have felt when he made this. There's much good about the movie, most notably Sean Penn's performance, but the film ends suddenly and leaves me with feelings of what might have been had Allen shown some energy. The movie felt as though he wasn't up to the task of completing the damn thing. Similarly, only once did he make good use of the fact that a certain anecdote could be a mistruth by giving us multiple versions; the rest of the film, he has narrators remind us that the story might be unreliable, but doesn't use this great conceit in the actual narrative of the film. The abrupt ending to the movie makes me feel as though Allen didn't know where he wanted to take this. This should have been much better, given the great performances and the great conception.