Larry as Woody? 'Whatever Works'
Boris (Larry David) and Melody (Evan Rachel Wood) approach life from vastly different points of view. (Sony Pictures Classics)
Whatever Works
Running time: 92 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13 (profanity, sexual situations, brief nude images, thematic material)
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Woody Allen hasn't stopped starring in his pessimistic, yet tender-hearted cinematic comic essays about love and death.
He just appears to be taking a break from appearing in them.
Larry David stands in for Allen to break the fourth wall and ask the movie audience, "Why do you want to hear my story?" in "Whatever Works," a whimsical comic-drama of note.
David's eccentric curmudgeon Boris Yellnikoff, a former Columbia University professor with an inflated opinion of his own genius and a dour outlook on life, might have been played by Allen himself a few years ago.
While David has no problem whatsoever curbing Boris's enthusiasm for human existence, there is one striking difference with the HBO sitcom star in the role.
David can be counted on to deliver funny lines. Allen, especially in his prime, was funny saying almost any line.
Despite the absence of the preferred misanthrope, "Whatever Works" is so well-crafted by writer-director Allen (New York's unofficial muse) that it overcomes David's shortcomings as a comic actor.
Don't get me wrong, Jerry Seinfeld's collaborator on the long-running sitcom "Seinfeld" knows funny and he knows how to write it. Unfortunately, David is just not a naturally funny fellow in front of the camera.
The good news is that after venturing to Great Britain and Spain to make a a quartet of films, Allen returns to the old New York neighborhood of "Annie Hall" and "Manhattan" for "Whatever Works."
Boris, a failure at marriage, life in general and even suicide (an awning broke his fall when he jumped out a window), spends his time these days boring his friends with his grandiose opinion of himself and belittling kids because they can't grasp his chess theories quick enough.
All that changes one night when a little waif of a Mississippi runaway, who's shivering under his stairs, asks for a handout. As days and months pass, Boris reluctantly provides a hand up to Melody St. Ann Celestine (Even Rachel Wood). Melody's a sweet-but-dumb Southern belle whose skull appears to be as thick as her molasses-like accent.
It won't surprise any Woody Allen fan that the cleverly conceived screenplay revolves around an older man/young lover scenario.
David holds up his end of the acting bargain well enough. In fact, his performance is strongly buoyed by Wood, the excellent co-star of last year's "The Wrestler" as Mickey Rourke's estranged daughter.
"Whatever Works" oozes Allen's common comic neuroses. Allen even spreads out the mentally fragile material to include excellent Oscar-nominee Patricia Clarkson ("Pieces of April") as Melody's strait-laced mother.
Ed Begley Jr. eventually joins the parlor-farce party as John, Melody's repressed father. He shows up to bring his little girl home, then -- like almost everyone in this opus -- he's transformed in one way or another by New York's melting pot.
Whatever else can be said about Woody Allen, add this: No one can bring the same spectacular blend of whip-smart whimsy and gloom to the screen and pay it off in laughs like Allen, especially with a marginally funny guy like Larry David out front.
That's what makes "Whatever Works" work.
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