Beautiful and Vacant

Rating: 3/10 (16 September 2010)

The first part of the film is a smash, but the whole thing rapidly falls apart. The story is simply not credible and the way the characters are drawn is even worse. I have always had mixed opinions about Woody Allen. I thought Hanna and Her Sisters was brilliant, but the weakness in Allen's films I think is the writing which is why I generally do not care for his work. He was a stand up comic after all - hardly an Ingmar Bergman. And therein lies the rub - Allen always scratches the surface of life the way a stand up comic does - he simply cannot get into the core of life the way Bergman does because Bergman is an artist and Allen will always be a stand up comic. There were so many things that annoyed me about this film that it would be pointless to list them here, but it is classic Allen - vapid and inane but great to look at and wonderful to hear (the music).