Anything Else (2003) / The Front (1976) / Vicky Christina Barcelona (2008)

In response to Ian's heartfelt search for a different comedy, I propose Woody Allen films. I've seen three lately, The Front, Vicky Christina Barcelona and Anything Else. To be honest, The Front wasn't an Allen film, because he starred in but didn't direct.

Christina Ricci, co-star in Anything Else, gets me going in that good way. To quote Jason Biggs, Ricci's boyfriend in the film, or maybe it was Biggs' then-girlfriend who said it, she's got an offbeat sexual energy. But her whole aura is offset in this movie pretty quickly by her outright craziness, like a nightmare in Brooklyn kind of torture-your-boyfriend nutiness. She tries to set Biggs's character up with different women, depriving him of sex while encouraging him to sleep around, and lets her mom move into the living room of their apartment. The film's set in Queens or thereabouts, with a bunch of brown stone houses, I think.

Not to be outdone, the crazy girlfriend in Vicky Xtina (Penelope Cruz) wields a gun and rummages through other peoples' luggage. She got the Best Supporting Actress award but doesn't appear in the film until about halfway through. We were misled, hoping for another Volver (my gf is a huge P. and Suri Cruz fan. We own Vanilla Sky). Javier Bardem rules in this film, making out with pretty much everyone worth kissing in the thing, yet still retaining some integrity as an artist.

So what's with Allen and crazy women? Who knows.

No watch checks in either of those films, although I did watch Anything Else on two consecutive nights, about half each time. The dialogue is good, with Biggs doing his best Woody Allen. Allen himself co-stars as a paranoid best buddy/mentor. It made me miss having a crazy mentor like I did at my last job.

So these are different comedies, not gross-out, wittier, perhaps snootier, than the Apatowian stuff. Anything Else gets a little slow or tries a little too hard, with split screens at one point showing the zany action in three different situations at once. It's definitely old style.

The Front, meanwhile, tried way too hard. It was based on the Hollywood blacklist, but set in New York, where some TV was filmed/aired live back in the 50s, evidently. The actors were real blacklisted types, except Allen I guess. I feel like everyone took it a little too seriously to be funny. There is a great Allen moment at the end though, where he sticks it to his WASP-y persecutors. He avoids answering their questions, without taking the 5th, and mumbles his way into an indictment of the communist witchhunt. Take that G-men!

Monty Python's Spamalot

I must say that I was a bit skeptical of the quality of a touring performance of the acclaimed musical based on the acclaimed movie based on the legend of Arthur (all three bases noted as "loosely"). At one time in my brief existence on the this planet, I was a student of musical theatre. From that I gained appreciation for most of the production— lights and video and explosions of confetti; moving set pieces and bedazzled codpieces. All in all it can be handily described as "Fun."
The best jokes were the ones of topical Blow-goi-oh-vich nature inserted into the various French and Knights Who Say Ni tauntings. And I could appreciate the numbers and dances that referenced Fiddler, Cabaret, Phantom, Les Mis etc. Considering it was m'lady's first musical experience ever, some of those parodies may have been lost on her, though they were still amusing and she had fun.
And as much as I love parody and satire, I don't think I need a musical of the Meaning of Life, Life of Brian, or Flying Circus. In Spamalot, much of the dialog was lifted and the story was patched together to conveniently explain the enrollment of the knights in the round table, but they were leading me astray. I wholly expected certain Holy Grail elements that never materialized. It would have been spectacular to have a Black Beast of Arrgh!, but understandably did not appear. While I don't understand why I didn't get the shrill sound effect when The Ni Knights dictate the procurement of aaaaaa..... SHRUBBERY! (TREENNGG!)
Missing.
But for the lame missing parts, it was fun.
Richard Chamberlain, whose career spans something like 50 yrs, played Arthur. very. very. slowly.
Some of his dance numbers looked like group activities from a retirement home... without the daily servings of prunes.
Constipated bastards.