DECONSTRUCTING HARRY (74)

Directed by: Woody Allen

Starring: Woody Allen, Kirstie Alley, Judy Davis, Hazel Goodman

The Pitch: Writer Harry Block's life is a mess, even though he's on his way to receive an honorary degree from his alma mater.

Theo Sez: Why doesn't Woody Allen get the respect he deserves? Can it be because he's apparently (horrors!) Not A Nice Person in real life? The anti-Woodys are unlikely to be appeased by this quasi-autobiographical fantasia, pointing out that it amounts to a whitewash of its director in the name of Art, allowing him (i.e. his onscreen surrogate) to be as odious as he likes because he's a good writer - even though the pro-Woodys might reasonably retort that the film doesn't justify its hero but merely tolerates him, i.e. refuses to condemn, and in any case that the "real" Woody isn't a pill-popper or an S+M buff : that, in other words, like Bob Fosse in ALL THAT JAZZ (the other half of a perfect double-bill), he's exaggerating his problems to devise a separate, outrageous (but fully-formed) alter ego, a kind of creative exorcism. The result is patchy and scrappy, not unlike one of Woody's short-story collections, with inspired bits (the out-of-focus actor, the Tobey Maguire episode, the Jewish-husband-as-killer-cannibal) side by side with some rather tedious padding ; elegant it ain't, but it fizzes and sputters with neurotic energy and a sense of mischief (it really knows how to step on PC corns!), and its arrested adolescence is at least honest - is Rohmer any less of a "dirty old man" just because he cloaks his libido in the colours of detached Wisdom? At the very least, anyone who can go from the delicate charms of EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU to this kind of jump-cutting, plot-shuffling, acid-tongued hysteria in consecutive films has a range and confidence currently unique in American movies. Why doesn't Woody Allen get the respect he deserves? Can it be because, etc etc...