Whatever Works

After a few years abroad, Woody Allen returns to the Big Apple and the neurotic comedies that made his reputation. Larry David plays the Allen role here, a disillusioned nuclear physicist named Boris Yellnikoff, and it's a match made in misanthrope heaven. "Let me tell you, I'm not a likable guy," he explains in the opening address to the audience. He's a genius, a cynic, a misanthrope and a griping curmudgeon with no patience for "inchworms," which is pretty much the rest of humanity. This is classic Allen, full of philosophical asides and comic rants on the major contradictions and minor inconveniences of life, and with yet another May-December romance (with sweetly naïve and utterly guileless Evan Rachel Wood) that would be untenable outside of Allen's warm and human philosophy of life (as voiced by Boris): Whatever works. It's familiar stuff for Allen, a comic romance in which happy endings come to all who let themselves grow beyond their repressive definitions of the world. But, for all of Boris' kvetching, this is more enjoyable than the threadbare comedies Allen was cranking out before his European sojourn. The break did him good. He actually likes his characters here. No supplements on either the DVD or the Blu-ray editions, which is not unusual given the Woodman's reluctance to participate in such things.