A little background - I am a huge Woody Allen fan. I've seen all of is films with the exception of two or three (Whatever Works and Anything Else come to mind). I've loved most of his works that were considered to be just "ok" and I think he has been on a great run in recent years as his last four or five movies were really underrated.

I knew five minutes in that I was in trouble with this one. The film felt like was it made by an amateurish movie maker that was trying to replicate a Woody Allen movie and only had a week to do it. Right out of the gate the dialog was unbelievably bad. The lead male is almost always the voice of Allen and I felt bad for Chalamet as he gave it a good try. The first part of the movie was spent trying to mix in obscure literary references along with New York City references (which made it feel that much more like a hack imitating Woody Allen). My wife and I kept looking at each other to ask "Did Woody Allen really write this?" With the exception of one scene near the very end (and oh what a scene it is, albeit brief) this film was a complete waste of time. The lone bright spot was Fanning as she nailed her character. Chalamet was good but he couldn't elevate a mediocre script in the same way that Cate Blanchett elevated Blue Jasmine to being a decent film. I also understand that this film was a reference to other films (as his movies often are).... the plot and ending were just so forgettable.

While watching this film I thought a lot about Quintin Tarantino. Tarantino has repeatedly said that he doesn't want to get to the point where he is "losing it" and thus he won't make films much longer. Hopefully this is just a blip and that Allen's next film (if there is one) will be stronger. If this does not come to pass then I appreciate what Woody has done and I certainly can't get worked up about him making one film too many.

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My reviews of Woody's other movies can be found here: https://ihatebadmovies.com/?_wpmoly_movie_director=Woody+Allen&_orderby=wp_review_total%2Cdesc