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BY KIM MORGAN |
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Celebrity Rated R Opens Friday, Nov. 20 Does Woody Allen have a great movie left in him? Judging from his track record over the last six years, it appears unlikely. Despite unwarranted critical acclaim for his somewhat entertaining Bullets Over Broadway, the isn't-this-charming praise bestowed upon his annoying musical Everyone Says I Love You and Mira Sorvino's Academy Award for Mighty Aphrodite, Allen has been floundering in a sea of his own tired schtick, a routine that was once thought-provoking, honest and hilarious. What happened? Since his films have closely paralleled his personal life, perhaps it has something to do with Mia Farrow. Ever since he dumped his female counterpart for her daughter, he has churned out films distinguishable for being either somewhat amusing or flat-out bad. Is Allen a better director when his personal life is miserable? His last great film, one of the finest of his career, was Husbands and Wives (starring Farrow), released shortly after the couple's very public breakup. Some esteemed artists soften with age, and Allen is doing the same, resting on laurels he earned long ago. Now he's a kvetching broken record. Will critics take note? With Celebrity, they'll have to. A messy meditation on the public and the media's obsession with fame, Allen's latest film is a tiresome ordeal that bounces from one encounter to the next with flaccid results. Kenneth Branagh plays Lee Simon, a celebrity journalist who has just left his schoolteacher wife, Robin (Judy Davis), with the age-old excuse that he's got to find himself. In an environment filled with supermodels, movie stars, hungry young actresses and intellectual babes, Lee naturally attempts to find himself through sexual conquest, and he's got plenty of opportunities. First there's screen legend Nicole Olivier (the frighteningly silicone- and saline-injected Melanie Griffith), who won't sleep with him (she's married) but agrees to accommodate him orally. Then there's a sex-obsessed model (Charlize Theron) who throws herself at the nebbish reporter and becomes orgasmic when he touches her hand. He gets serious about Bonnie (Famke Janssen), an editor, but ultimately leaves her for Nola (Winona Ryder), an aspiring actress he thinks will give him true love. Juxtaposed with Lee's travails is Robin's slow semi-triumph. The neurotic intellectual meets and falls for TV producer Tony Gardella (Joe Mantegna), a man so too-good-to-be-true that she nervously waits, as she puts it, "for the other shoe to drop." Swirling around Robin and Lee's story are, of course, the celebrities, who attempt to provide intriguing parallels to the divorcees' situations. They do nothing of the sort--but at least they add some memorable diversions from the film's irritating protagonists. Leonardo Di Caprio is the best of them as a bratty star who trashes a hotel room, indulges in drugs and cruises for groupies with his girlfriend (Gretchen Mol) in patient attendance. His 10 minutes are the most engaging and lively of the entire picture. Di Caprio gets the joke, and he's funny without falling into the trap that so many actors working with Allen succumb to: emulating the director. It's a trap that Branagh can't avoid. The 62-year-old Allen must have realized the believability of Bond babe Famke Janssen wanting him sexually was slim, so he hired the younger Branagh to play his alter ego. Bad move. As Simon/Allen, Branagh is so mannered, so overly stammering, so excessively gesticulating and faux-Jewish that he's as embarrassing to watch as a bad Saturday Night Live skit. Allen is clearly trying to create a La Dolce Vita on the cusp of the millennium, but he is no Fellini, as Stardust Memories proved, and his alter-ego Lee is no Marcello Mastroianni. Allen is not even Robert Altman, who likewise has the curious ability to get every star imaginable to provide their services for his hackneyed ideas. There are some funny moments in Celebrity, but there are no profound or original ones; the film is instead filled with trite commentary that is obvious (stars are vain) and self-serving. Where is the Allen who created the perfect example of crass, egotistical and empty celebrity in Alan Alda's character in Crimes and Misdemeanors, a man who declared, "Comedy is tragedy plus time"? Celebrity begins and ends with a skywriter writing "Help!" above Manhattan. It's meant as a plea to end or understand the madness of fame, but it serves better as a cry from Woody Allen himself. He needs help.
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