WhatzUp

Anything Else
by Derek Neff

You wouldn’t know it from watching the TV commercials for Anything Else, or from looking at the box at your local video store, but Anything Else is a Woody Allen movie. Yes, even if the marketing people at Dreamworks don’t want you to know it, from its familiar opening credits-simple white letters on a black screen, to the tune of scratchy old-time jazz-to its occasionally heavy-handed literary voice-overs, this is vintage Allen. And while I would never make the claim that Anything Else measures up to the likes of Manhattan or Hannah and Her Sisters (or half a dozen other Allen pictures), I am pleased to report that it is certainly his best work since Deconstructing Harry, which was, what, six pictures ago? Seven? In any case, if one were plotting a line graph of Allen’s recent progress (Allen pointedly makes one picture a year, come hell or high water), one would see a sudden, pleasantly-jarring upward spike on the tail-end of a steady downward slope. (Hollywood Ending, his previous movie, has to be his all-time low point.)

Anything Else tells the story of young comedy writer Jerry Falk (Jason Biggs, of American Pie fame) and his spectacularly unhealthy relationship with Amanda (Christina Ricci). Through flashbacks we see Jerry and Amanda cheating on their respective lovers to be with each other; a year or two later they are living in the same apartment, but Amanda has no interest in sex, or for that matter in Jerry at all. (And she might be cheating on him, to boot.) To make matters worse, Amanda’s mother (wonderfully played by Stockard Channing) moves into their already cramped apartment. She has come to New York to pursue her life-long dream of becoming a lounge singer. (My favorite scene in the entire movie has Channing starkly singing Peggy Lee’s “There’ll Be Another Spring” while the other characters go about their lives around her. I must have watched it three or four times in a row.)

Jerry also has a mentor-protÈgÈ relationship with an older writer, David Dobel (played by none other than Allen himself), who urges Jerry to break up with Amanda, and to fire his incompetent manager (Danny Devito). Dobel’s advice would be well-taken were it not for the fact that Dobel himself is a classic paranoid who collects survivalist gear and has fantasies of living out the remainder of his years in a post-apocalyptic world. What is brilliant about Dobel as a character is that he inhabits the classic Allen persona (the harmless nebbish) while showing us brief snatches of something darker and more self-destructive within.

Ricci’s performance is as good as it can be, considering some of the lines she’s given to say - Anything Else has some wonderful characters, but it is not half as funny as it thinks it is. And despite some initial stiffness, Biggs impressively acquits himself as well. But it is Allen’s surprisingly nuanced performance (and Channing’s haunting voice) that will stay with me the longest.

Here’s hoping that Allen’s next picture will be even better.