Anything Else (2003) Woody Allen

Production Budget: $18 million Worldwide Gross: $13 million

I don’t know about the world at large but I had no idea about this movie being released when it first came out. I remember first seeing it in the Blockbuster and by the box cover thought it was a lame Direct to Video cash in on the mild success of the American Pie films. Then I looked on the back and saw it was done by Woody Allen and then thought “How far has he fallen that he has to do DTV films now?” Well, it got a theatrical release and despite initial bomb status, has found a cult following. Sure, there are many that hate it, but it does have its defenders. Quentin Tarantino has it as one of the best movies in the last 25 years and even Allen considers this as one of the best movies he’s done that best represents him.

Anything Else is about young comedy writer Jerry Falk (Jason Biggs). Jerry is trying to come into his own despite a bad talent manager (Danny DeVito) with the help of older mentor David Dobel (played by Allen). During this he has a tumultuous relationship with his girlfriend Amanda (Christina Ricci).

I would have played “Stop if you’ve heard this before” but you would have stopped me at “Set in New York…” before even getting to Annie Hall, writers, intellectuals, actress, jazz score, relationships, evil women, etc. So okay, this is a modern “Greatest Hits” of Annie Hall. Clearly this movie has found its fans and maybe initial press was bad because of recent failures. Once again, the point of this is to find hidden gems. Sorry to disappoint you guys but I will not be in agreement with Quentin Tarantino.

One of criticisms for this movie is the portrayal of women; mainly Amanda. No longer are the women in Allen’s movies just slightly neurotic or finnicky but now straight up evil harpies. Amanda doesn’t just do wrong, but he seemingly has malicious intent. As I mentioned in a previous review, in the past Allen was much more able to take as well as he gave. In Annie Hall, Annie may have issues, but Alvy was just as bad if not worse. In Anything Else, Amanda is evil and Jerry is as innocent as an angel.

Now I could forgive this if the writing were better. I could see a movie about a shy door mat who meets a brash mentor who teaches him to take control of his life. In that case, you can play the humor more broadly and have the characters be more shallow. Anything Else kind of plays like that in how Jerry has David who dispenses wisdom at the drop of a hat. The problem is that relationship isn’t fully capitalized on and the comedy isn’t as wacky as it should be. All David does is state the obvious: you should dump your agent, you should dump Amanda, etc. He should be putting Jerry in wacky situations to build his confidence. There is one scene like that where David comically beats on a bully’s car with a tire iron but the whole movie should have been like that. I’m thinking more Trent from Swingers, and Woody is thinking more like a nebbish Qui Gon Jinn.

I got fed up with the characters in this movie. Amanda is obviously the antagonist so you can’t be interested in her. But Jerry is so pathetic we don’t care about him either. It doesn’t help that we never get that big a turnaround in his character or that the antagonists don’t get a proper comeuppance. Because of all that I could never really get into the movie or the comedic situations.

I will give both credit and criticism for the casting of Jason Biggs. The credit is that Biggs isn’t like all the other non-Woody castings in that he doesn’t try to do an impersonation of Woody. I am so sick of other actors trying stutter and wildly gesticulate trying to make Woody happy and here Biggs just plays a nice kid. It is rather refreshing to just have Biggs seemingly be himself which comes off as more casual. The criticism comes in more about the writing of Allen in that Jason Biggs cannot deliver the lines. Biggs has to give the same pretentious lines about Dostoevsky and deliver the same witty banter Allen would and he just can’t do it. It is not in Biggs’ character to say those lines so his prattling about existentialism or whatever goes over like a lead balloon.

Anything Else didn’t do much of anything to keep me interested. At best it can be amusing especially with the relationship between Jerry and David where the chemistry really comes through. But most of the time the humor was played too tame for it to either be witty or zany. The characters hurt the movie the most by being either being so passive or malicious that you can’t be invested in what happens to them. This isn’t among the worst Allen has done (although his recent work has really lowered the bar) but it is not good either. This is only for those extremely forgiving of Allen’s lesser works.