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Fielding wrote:You're welcome, romancingthegutter.

Woody Allen's Whatever Works: preety, preety good

Don't curb your enthusiasm for Woody Allen's homecoming film – Whatever Works is engaging and funny, and in Larry David, he's found a new kindred spirit to channel his sensibility

There's something inherently entertaining about watching Larry David lope along a red carpet, chewing gum, wearing a shit-eating grin that says, "Sure, it's ridiculous these people are calling my name, but hey, maybe they've got a point." It's around 7.30 on a wet Wednesday night and David is arriving at the Ziegfeld, one of New York's more characterful movie theatres, for the world premiere of Woody Allen's new feature, Whatever Works, in which he stars. He ambles over to the barrier behind which a couple of dozen autograph-hunters are gathered and signs a few photos before heading into the theatre. "It's raining," he brays with a so-sue-me smirk, pointing up at the canvas awning keeping the red-carpet area bone dry. He enters the theatre, deaf to a plaintive cry of, "We're the ones getting wet!"

An awning also saves his character's ass at the beginning of Whatever Works, Allen's first film since Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Having decided on the futility of his existence as a comfortably married Columbia University quantum physicist – almost nominated for the Nobel prize – Boris jumps from a high window. Thanks to that awning, he's left only with a limp. Relocating to a shabby Lower Manhattan loft, he hooks up with young Mississippian runaway Melodie (Evan Rachel Wood), whose chipper inanity proves oddly complementary to his self-aggrandising misanthropy. Before too long, their peculiar ménage is interrupted by some discombobulated visitors, whose working out of their own regrets and desires brings more upheaval.

Whatever Works is the first movie Allen has shot in his signature location, Manhattan, since 2004's Melinda and Melinda. It's therefore apt that its premiere was also the opening gala of another, younger New York institution, the Tribeca film festival. The return to home turf seems to have paid off, yielding a consistently energetic, engaging and funny picture that builds on the success of Vicky Cristina Barcelona after the run of disappointing London-based titles. And if Allen doesn't break much new ground here in terms of tone, story or setting, there's certainly novelty value in the casting of the lead role, a new kind of vehicle for Allen's sensibility.

Boris proves to be a curious melding of Allen's and David's comedic personae, which overlap in many areas: constant indignation at society's shortcomings, a knack for dry, sharp observations and tremendous confidence in their own opinions. But there are also distinctive characteristics that each brings to Boris: his indulgence of intellectualised amour fou with a much younger woman and discovery of solace in Fred Astaire and Groucho Marx, for instance, are pure Allen, while the character's streak of cocky defiance and impish delight in provocation is very David.

There's a certain tension here between introversion and extroversion. David exudes amusement, Allen bemusement – or so it seemed as they posed together for the cameras before the screening. The film partly addresses this by making Boris so preposterously superior as to be endearing, and partly by having him directly address the camera, a gambit that both puts him above the main action and excludes him from it.

He's never a wholly convincing human being, though he's the closest thing to one in the film. Boris spends his time irritably teaching chess to kids but he and his fellow characters feel like pawns, or thought experiments made flesh. A certain schematic quality is unsurprising, though, given Allen's currently preferred form. Like his other recent pictures, Whatever Works is a dramatic essay on a social-psychological hypothesis – in this case, that life is short, love irrational and happiness precious, so we should embrace, well, whatever works.

If not especially credible, the characters are appealingly distinctive thanks to a fine cast, especially Patricia Clarkson and Ed Begley Jr as Melodie's parents. The pace remains zippy and the script provides a steady stream of laughs, often cruel. "That's an awful ensemble," Boris tells Melodie at one point. "Are you looking to wind up in an abortion clinic?" Elsewhere, the dialogue can be clunky, proving it's not just European actors Allen saddles with duff lines; one actor here has to say, "I know what I'm talking about, I occasionally write about the aesthetics of photography."

Thanks to Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David is now associated with Los Angeles, but the sitcom he co-created, Seinfeld, is all about New York. In that sense, Whatever Works is a return home for the movie's star as much as its director. But where Seinfeld's city was a battleground of petty skirmishes, it's nourishing for Allen, even necessary. For all his cynicism, Boris never kvetches about Manhattan; in fact, as he proudly shows the city off to Melodie, it proves that he has faith in something despite himself. Moreover, Allen shows it as the place where lost souls become their true selves. Along with its exhortation to seize happiness where it lies, Whatever Works suspects that anyone who fails to appreciate New York is – to use one of Boris's favourite putdowns – an inchworm.

Binker wrote:LD's not up for this

That Guardian article wrote:An awning also saves his character's ass at the beginning of Whatever Works, Allen's first film since Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

kaujot wrote:

That Guardian article wrote:An awning also saves his character's ass at the beginning of Whatever Works, Allen's first film since Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Thanks for the heads up! I was wondering what had happened to him.

Highway 61 wrote:Other than the "Don't mention Woody Allen" tagline, I like it. Then again, I'm a Curb nut.