Luke warm Woody short on comedy and drama.

Rating: 5/10 (25 August 2008)

Woody Allen has all but exhausted his neurotic comedy routine in this dull and vapid tale of romantic intrigue and sexual tension. He's taken the show on the road to Barcelona, Spain and installed female characters (with the assistance of a male narrator) to verbalize the same anxieties that Fielding Melish, Alvy Singer and Danny Rose turned into comic brilliance.
In Vicky Christina Barcelona we are presented with two American women, one grounded, one scattered who fall under the spell of a magnetic Spanish painter with Picasso bravado. Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) has little trouble bedding the free spirited Christina (Scarlet Johannsen)which to his dismay is short circuited when she comes down with food poisoning. Vicky, engaged to be married, resists Juan Antonio until the the right blend of Spanish guitar and wine do the trick. Humiliated by her backtracking she hides the truth from Christina who becomes heavily involved with Juan and moves in with him. Conflicted Vicky meanwhile agrees to marry her boyfriend in Barcelona. Back at Juan's place, passionate and unstable ex-wife Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz) moves in with him and Christina and spices things up.
VCB is neither complex or convoluted, it's just plain dull. Vicky and Christine mouth much of the same in-certitudes and anxieties found in most of Allen's films while displaying confident intellectual banter and newly discovered artistic talent. Vicky soaks up Gaudy and Catalonian culture and drones on about "turgid intellectual imperative" while Christina in under two months is on the road to becoming the next Cartier Bresson. In unabashed stereotyping Allen utilizes his "hot blooded" Spanish leads to bring and instill passion into the proceedings but his tepid dialogue and action prevent it from building and it is left to a narrator to move things along.
After nearly forty years of film making Allen has become a genre in himself. He was a major player during American film's last Golden Age in the 70's but since the late 80's has been hit or miss (mostly miss) with similar scenarios, dialogue and characters lifted from previous films. Farrow and Keaton have been replaced by Johansson and Barcelona pinch hits for New York City but Woody remains Woody and the lipstick he attempts to puts on this pig smudges quickly.