Bedazzled

Rating: Null/10 (17 February 2016)

After confining himself to New York all his life, Woody Allen has now discovered Europe. You can sense his excitement with it all...artists...old buildings...genuine culture rooted in real history, and most importantly, liberated attitudes. Europeans will find his sense of wonder painfully naive. This film is for those who have never heard of Gaudi - Woody seems determined to introduce him to us, as if it is all something new. Okaay, it will be to many, but the real problem here is the idealisation of everything.
In Europe you apparently get to live in a millionaire's mansion simply by splashing (literally) paint on a canvas. Even supermodels are artists...nay, geniuses. And the magic of Europe is infectious - Cristina (Scarlett Johanson) miraculously discovers her true talent as a photographer (together with a pretentious rediscovery of the darkroom). It's a shock to discover Woody is really so unsophisticated as to think we need to be handed these little artistic homilies. New York must be a narrower world than New Yorkers think.
There's a threesome in this film that comes about simply because everyone is, well, so wonderful in Europe, so avant-garde, so uninhibited - it's a love affair with a continent. Anyway, even if you're European and are choking on this, as well as the usual Allenesque stammering, plus the nagging suspicion that the awful title is infecting the whole film with its ungainliness, you can always simply sit back and enjoy the view. Johansson is gorgeous - and a fine actress in the right role, if only this were one - and Rebecca Hall, who gives a fine, assured performance that holds things together. Javier Bardem seems to be the new Gerard Depardieu, but like Depardieu, should stick to his own language. Woody should stick to New York.