Whatever Works (Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood, Patricia Clarkson, Ed Begley, Jr.) – I am a card-carrying member of the Woody Allen fan club. Whatever Works is a return to the Woody of old, the neurotic, egocentric New Yorker who sees doom in all elements of the human condition. After some excellent movies in European settings with Match Point, Scoop, and Vicki Cristina Barcelona, Woody went back to the Big Apple. As he does in many movies in which he doesn’t cast himself, he inserts a character that talks like, thinks like, and acts like Woody. He picked a perfect surrogate in Larry David, a fellow New Yorker best known as the writer and star of TV’s Curb Your Enthusiasm and writer and co-producer of Seinfeld. David is 10 years younger than the 72-year-old Allen but he shares so much the The Woodman that he seems perfectly natural here. Using a technique he has employed in other films, Woody “breaks the fourth wall,” having David, playing Boris Yellnikoff talk often to the audience. Yellnikoff is a self-proclaimed genius who always “sees the big picture” and is just plain better than almost everyone else. He brags about almost being nominated for a Nobel Prize who taught quantum mechanics. Now, he schleps around with his friends – hard to believe he has many – played by character actors, like Michael McKean (Lenny of Laverne and Shirley).
Yellnikoff is a kvetch, Yiddish for a chronic complainer, who (like his other “Woody” surrogates) is a hypochondriac and fatalist. He suffers from panic attacks and even unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide, leaving him with a bad limp. One night, as he is returning to his home, he is surprised by a teenage runaway from Mississippi who is looking for a place to live and get her feet on the ground. Played wonderfully by the newest Woody young, nubile actress, Evan Rachel Wood (Across the Universe, The Wrestler, The Upside of Anger), Melodie St. Ann Celestine is totally clueless, innocent and unschooled big girl. Lucky for her, Yellnikoff isn’t a letch and lets her in to give her a meal … which turns in to a night … then a month. Suddenly, she professes a crush for him. He dismisses this at first, but as only can happen in a Woody movie, they get married and are surprisingly happy. But suddenly, the girl’s equally airhead mother, Marietta, shows up. Played by the queen of the indies, the brilliant Patricia Clarkson, she is appalled by her daughter’s old, sarcastic, compulsive husband and sets about to find her an appropriate man. At the same time, she blossoms in New York, hangs out with Boris’ friends, and eventually sleeps with them and discovers that her photographs actually have artistic value. She and her daughter both mature in this bizarre world. And then, her father shows up. Ed Begley, Jr. plays John, the man who left Marietta for her best friend and now wants her back. He, too, is appalled by Boris and his daughter’s marriage and his ex-wife’s lifestyle. So he heads to the bar, where he meets a fellow sad sack and discovers his latent attraction for men. Doesn’t this sound just like Woody?
The fun is in the interplay of the characters and, particularly, in Woody’s shotgun and clever dialogue. For Woody fans like me, this is vintage Woody. Not the best of Woody but a return to his New York neurotic shtick that I have missed in recent films. Now that he’s too old to play himself, he may have found the perfect actor to play himself. This film is most like Mighty Aphrodite, which isn’t all bad. I really liked. If you don’t like Woody, you won’t like this. But if you do, this is fun.