Review: 'Whatever Works'

Woody Allen’s told his share of dark stories. “Crimes and Misdemeanors” (1989) and “Match Point” (2005) immediately come to mind. Both are remarkable films that delve into the auteur’s well-traveled theme of what morality means in a world he sees as godless and pointlessly random. In each, the protagonist plots and carries out a cold-blooded murder. Neither is caught or punished. In fact, both prosper. Without condoning the behavior, Allen expertly uses the dramatic extreme of murder to illustrate his belief that we live in a world where if you can get past the law and over your own conscience, it’s all relative. And you need not agree to find this idea fascinating.

With “Whatever Works,” a deeply unpleasant, unfunny “comedy” starring Larry David, Allen takes a disturbing stride towards condoning this form of nihilism. We’re far beyond “The Heart Wants What It Wants,” the memorable theme explored so tenderly in Allen’s 1986 masterpiece “Hannah and Her Sisters.” In that film there were at least very real and human consequences to infidelity and other selfish, romantic pursuits. No more. “Whatever Works” might as well be titled “Whatever Works Works.”

David plays Boris Yellnikoof, a misanthrope’s misanthrope and relentless Leftist elitist incapable of humanity or kindness. In a series of unfunny monologues, Boris breaks the third fourth wall, acknowledges those of us in the audience and spews the same philosophy on the worthlessness of life that recently drove him out a window in a failed suicide attempt. To anyone within earshot, he’s an insistent ranter sure he’s the only one who’s figured it out because the rest of us worthless insects are embalmed with pop culture and religion.

The former academic who was once “almost nominated for the Nobel Prize” lives in a decrepit walk up and teaches chess to kids (actually he hurls insults at them) in order to meet the monthly nut. One night, on his way home, he finds a teenage waif at the bottom of his stairs, Melodie St. Ann Celestine (Evan Rachel Wood), a runaway from Mississippi. Before you can say “Why Does Woody Always Bore Us With This Troubling Obsession of His,” the sixty-year old Boris marries teen-aged Melodie.

But “Whatever Works” is only getting started. Melodie’s estranged mother and father — uptight, God-fearing Redstaters played by Ed Begley Jr. and Patricia Clarkson — are the next to arrive and fall under the spell of a Bohemian Manhattan. Before long, Allen’s ham-handed stereotypes give up the Jesus talk and silly country values for the promise of happiness found in divorce, ménage a trios and the long-repressed, inner homosexual.

Allen’s writing is shockingly lazy. The dialogue plays like something from a high school play with every on-the-nose scene stiffly performed as if over-rehearsed. The characters are worse; paper thin. Other than Rachel Wood, who summons more depth than the script deserves, the usually terrific Clarkson and Begley Jr. seem satisfied playing caricatures, which should come as no surprise. Hollywood bigots, never shy about granting terrorists, Nazis, rapists and child molesters some level of depth and dimension, refuse anything of the kind for us Wal-Mart shopping, Jesus-lovers.

With mixed results, the 74-year old Allen has used stand-ins before but David’s the worst — yes even worse than Kenneth Branagh. At least Branagh’s a talented film actor who brings something to the table above the script. Allen himself brings an unspoken pathos to these characters, even the narcissist in “Stardust Memories” and rank bastard in “Deconstructing Harry.” David only proves he’s a television actor, a sitcom guy, whose sitcom schtick never parts its own waters long enough to allow us a glimpse of the human being beneath Boris’s bile.

Not only is “Whatever Works” Allen’s worst film by a long shot, it’s an unrelentingly ugly thing that allows for a horrible, cruel and selfish man’s philosophy to win the day. In the past, even in Allen’s godless world, a consequence of some kind was meted out to these types, or at least a rotting of the soul was implied. But the man who did more than anyone to lampoon his own kind, those he famously described as the “New York, Jewish, Left-Wing, Liberal, Intellectual, Central Park West, Brandeis University, Socialist summer camps, and the father with the Ben Shahn drawings” crowd, appears to be devolving into something that lacks the self-awareness that once made him so unique.