Whatever Works - C

In theaters. Rated R, 92 minutes. Trailer.

Writer/Director Woody Allen has been on a commercial and critical hot streak of late, with Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Match Point (B+) both faring well in both arenas. Whatever Works will end the streak on both fronts, despite starring one of my favorite people, Larry David as Allen's stand-in (the closest you can possibly get to Allen himself). David is Boris Yelnikov, a brilliant but negative older New Yorker with an EXTREMELY pessimistic worldview with a history of suicide attempts. Click below for more on WW:

The film follows a normal Allen arc - older male meets, enlightens and falls in love with a much younger naive but beautiful woman who ultimately disappoints and leaves him. David is spot on in the role, which is essentially a more cerebral and less likeable version of his Curb Your Enthusiasm character. He spouts off lots of different takes on his view of the world (not entirely unfamiliar to this writer) involving chaos theory and a dim view of religion. Those parts worked, but the film lacks an interesting plot or enough interesting characters. Patricia Clarkson is great in her role as the mother of Evan Rachel Wood's character that goes WAY off the deep end in New York.

Allen's thesis is the ultimate in moral relativism, basically the opposite of any religious teaching - that is, whatever works to make you happy and to fulfill yourself is what you should do, and that religion and 'southern' values only serve to repress your true self. Uh, okay, that works for all of the different wealthy, unmarried and childless adults in New York City, but not for the continuation of the species and a meaningful society. The final scene of the film sees each character happy and all of the southern rubes having been transformed by the NYC relativism pixie dust into happy adults, each relationship representing a worldview. But Allen doesn't include anyone that is in a normal, moral relationship and that is the most glaring problem with the film.