Release Date: September 19, 2003
Starring: Jason Biggs, Woody Allen, Christina Ricci, Danny DeVito, Stockard Channing, Jimmy Fallon
Directed by: Woody Allen
Written by: Woody Allen
Distributed by: DreamWorks
MPAA Rating: R (drug use, sexual references)
Anything Else marks Woody Allen’s official transition into the next generation of comedic filmmaking. Naysayers have used his recent works as strong evidence that Allen, one of Hollywood’s all-time favorite writer-director-actors, has all but lost his touch. But they’re wrong in this case: With Anything Else he’s still the brains behind the operation but he’s passing the torch over to a younger cast with a charming wit and a fresher batch of humorous cultural observations. What Allen has made is a smart and sophisticated romantic comedy reminiscent of the work of his heyday, and it’s most welcome since few filmmakers have pulled off something similarly enjoyable in this age of stale romantic movies.
In Anything Else Jason Biggs plays Jerry Falk, a young comedy writer trying to make it big. At his side are his eccentric friend Dobel (Allen), his desperate but loyal agent Harvey (Danny DeVito), and his selfish but adorable girlfriend Amanda (Christina Ricci), and despite all of this, he has a fear of being alone, which leads him to great emotional turmoil when Amanda starts driving him crazy and he refuses to believe that she no longer cares for him. Meanwhile, Dobel is filling his head with paranoid notions about death and failure, his psychiatrist is all but supportive, his girlfriend’s mother has invaded his apartment, and his loser agent is making him the laughingstock of the business. All in all, Jerry’s life is no laughing matter -- except to all of us innocent onlookers, of course.
As Woody Allen fans may easily recognize, Jerry is exactly the type of character Allen would have played himself many years ago. Now he leaves it up to Biggs, the American Pie actor who can fully capture the nervous stutter, the zany wit, and the loveable loser persona that Allen perfected in the characters of his earlier works. Because of the charming clumsiness we all came to know from his previous roles in teen comedies, Biggs fits this new responsibility like a glove and gives Allen the perfect opportunity to show off his stuff to the younger audiences that the 25-year-old Biggs will hopefully attract. And the two have great chemistry together, making for a very strong comedic team that not only works here but could again in the future.
In a change of pace, Allen has limited himself to a supporting role rather than taking center stage and making his own life of neurotic tendancies and failed romances the main focus of the story. The role he plays, both behind and in front of the camera, is as a mentor to Biggs, and their characters share many memorable moments together, including a mismatched fight over a parking space between two burly men that results in a very funny scene of glass-breaking revenge.
There are plenty of comical situations -- look for Allen trying to move a piano during a split screen sequence and Biggs dropping all of the change out of his pants as he gets romantic with his girlfriend in the darkness -- and all of it, particularly the remarkably clever dialogue, is thanks to Allen’s unfailing knack for comedic writing. Some of the Jewish humor and paranoid theories may sound familiar, but we’ve never heard these lines before: “I want to commit suicide, but I have so many problems that wouldn’t solve them all,” or “The Pentagon could use her hormones for biological weapons.” Don’t let your ears rest for a minute, because you’ll miss the film’s most subtle jokes.
Allen’s more two previous films, Hollywood Ending and The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, were met with mild approval from critics and general indifference from audiences, but Anything Else does more justice to the director’s talent and reminds moviegoers that he has not, in fact, lost his touch. If he can still come up with mature and innocently funny films, which he clearly can, he should be applauded for sticking to what he knows -- and for giving audiences an alternative to raunchy comedies that resort to exploiting bodily functions.
Anything Else is an all-around admirable film and it will hopefully be one of many more to come from the mind of Woody Allen during this new generation of filmmaking. Young actors and moviegoers alike should be lining up to see what he has coming next.
-- Andy Zientek (zfilm@earthlink.net)