Quick Movie Review: Annie Hall

7/10

One of the atypical things about my particular movie watching history is that I have reached my age (27, if you're interested) having never ever seen a Woody Allen movie. I just never felt keen to watch his self written and self starring oeuvre. Well, as part of my ongoing education in all films I decided to give him a go.

So if one wants to remedy the situation where does one start? Well, in my case I decided to go with Annie Hall, frequently cited as his most accessible, and sometimes his best, film.

And I really enjoyed it for the time I spent with the two characters as they go through their little relationship and get into all sorts of dumb situations on account of neither of them being very good at this whole life and maturity thing.

The film-making is inventive as it is scatter-shot with all kinds of techniques, from the subtitling of internal monologue to actually full fledged animation, used in a mish mash of self absorbed and neurotic personal exploration. I don't necessarily mean that's a bad thing, by the way. The worlds of Manhattan and California are depicted in hardly the most complimentary lights, but I feel there's genuine affection for New York on Allen's part, probably more so than for his characters.

My major problem with Annie Hall, since you may be looking at the 7/10 and wondering about it, was that I didn't actually like either of the lead characters. Both of them were totally self obsessed, selfish and, in their own ways, extremely elitist. Alvy is a jackass - a total intellectual elitist with a sense of his own self importance feeding into his neuroses - there's all this trouble in the world and poor old Alvy can't cope boo hoo! Sure, it's played for laughs, but the fact that he knows he's a total knob doesn't stop him being one. Annie is even less sympathetic, incapable of sex without drugs, totally unable to cope with the real world and totally vacuous. Suffice to say I wasn't keen.

I did laugh quite a lot, though, at many of the moments in the film, and it is best described as a collection of moments. They're all quite low key and not really worth explaining out of the film's context, since a lot of the humour comes from the context. So I would say that I liked the film and found it funny, but didn't like the characters and so couldn't really go nuts for it.

And I would say that others may find this film as funny and perhaps the main characters more agreeable than I did. But in summary, there's always a problem for me with a film if my response to the leading man is an intense desire to punch him repeatedly in the face... especially since the (admit it!) arrogance of Woody directing, writing and starring is hovering in the background contradicting the attempted facade of lovable putz.

Just my opinion, and Allen lovers would proably crucify me (funny image for me to choose, in the circumstances), but there it is.

A