Hollywood director Val Waxman (Woody Allen) has lost both his wife (Téa Leoni) and his touch behind the camera. He is up in snowbound Canada shooting a commercial. Leoni convinces her new fiance (Treat Williams), who heads a major studio, that the new script he has, a straight-forward story with a New York setting, is just up Allen's alley. Allen gets the gig, but on the day he is about to start shooting, he wakes up with psychosomatic blindness.
Blindness is not a bad central metaphor in a story about a film director, but as a matrix of jokes, it has its drawbacks. Absolutely no one on this planet, including each and every blind person, could ever suspend their disbelief enough to accept that a director could complete a whole film while blind and while convincing almost everyone involved that he is not blind.
But then, this is a farce. So, taken at farce value, the script and performances had better be really, really funny. "Hollywood Ending" misses both really's and nearly all the funny. There are a few decent one-liners but not nearly enough, and without the brilliant one-liners, Allen's hilariously neurotic persona becomes merely fidgetyand pretty damn irritating. Worse, the dialogue is left with mere talkiness. No, it's not even talkyit's chattery. An early scene between Allen and Leoni in a restaurant is painful to endure. You can see what Allen is aiming at, but he never even comes close. It was awful.
Aside from the blindness, the only other funny concept (aside from the unintentionally funny notion of Allen's having a live-in girlfriend (Debra Messing) who's young enough to be his step-daughter) is that he hires a Chinese cinematographer who has done most of his work with the Red Army and speaks not a word of English. That necessitates a translator (Barney Cheng), who fits nicely into the plot and contributes a few laughs, but otherwise nothing at all is made of the cinematographer. Somehow, I've got to believe there's a joke or two in there somewhere when a blind director is working with a Red Army cinematographer who speaks only Chinese.
Perhaps the best joke comes right at the end, and it has a nice logical twist to it if you interpret "Hollywood Ending" in more than one way.
Not only is the script not funny, it is a bit clumsy. A sub-plot with Allen's son by his first marriage, which ties in with his blindness, is not introduced until, oh, maybe 3/4 of the way into the movie. Ok, maybe the son is mentioned a little earlier, but there's no indication at that time that it's more than a passing attempt at a little joke.
Well-photographed and a good job by Leoni. I go to see all of Allen's movies, even the bad ones. For anyone who doesn't do that, pass this one up.
Blindness is not a bad central metaphor in a story about a film director, but as a matrix of jokes, it has its drawbacks. Absolutely no one on this planet, including each and every blind person, could ever suspend their disbelief enough to accept that a director could complete a whole film while blind and while convincing almost everyone involved that he is not blind.
But then, this is a farce. So, taken at farce value, the script and performances had better be really, really funny. "Hollywood Ending" misses both really's and nearly all the funny. There are a few decent one-liners but not nearly enough, and without the brilliant one-liners, Allen's hilariously neurotic persona becomes merely fidgetyand pretty damn irritating. Worse, the dialogue is left with mere talkiness. No, it's not even talkyit's chattery. An early scene between Allen and Leoni in a restaurant is painful to endure. You can see what Allen is aiming at, but he never even comes close. It was awful.
Aside from the blindness, the only other funny concept (aside from the unintentionally funny notion of Allen's having a live-in girlfriend (Debra Messing) who's young enough to be his step-daughter) is that he hires a Chinese cinematographer who has done most of his work with the Red Army and speaks not a word of English. That necessitates a translator (Barney Cheng), who fits nicely into the plot and contributes a few laughs, but otherwise nothing at all is made of the cinematographer. Somehow, I've got to believe there's a joke or two in there somewhere when a blind director is working with a Red Army cinematographer who speaks only Chinese.
Perhaps the best joke comes right at the end, and it has a nice logical twist to it if you interpret "Hollywood Ending" in more than one way.
Not only is the script not funny, it is a bit clumsy. A sub-plot with Allen's son by his first marriage, which ties in with his blindness, is not introduced until, oh, maybe 3/4 of the way into the movie. Ok, maybe the son is mentioned a little earlier, but there's no indication at that time that it's more than a passing attempt at a little joke.
Well-photographed and a good job by Leoni. I go to see all of Allen's movies, even the bad ones. For anyone who doesn't do that, pass this one up.