Whatever Works movie reviews & Metacritic score: Woody Allen returns to New York with an offbeat comedy about a crotchety misanthrope and a naïve, impressio. I thought I would not like Whatever Works, because I read and heard some of the critics' negative reviews. So, the first ten to fifteen minutes or so into the movie, I'm thinking that Larry David is better at improvising, as on his own show, than doing someone else's lines, albeit Woody Allen's.
Though Allen's exquisite turns of phrase still amuse, the film feels dated, of a time when threesomes and May-December affairs still shocked (not surprisingly, the script. Larry David plays a grouchy, pessimistic genius who decides to live less. The movie comes from a shelved script that dates back to Annie Hall.
Obviously, that shelf has a function. As Larry David's snobby antihero bangs down the fourth wall with a barrage of excruciating whininess, you wonder if Allen's ear has finally gone tin. Check out the exclusive TVGuide.com movie review and see our movie rating for Whatever Works. If that were the extent of the movie's plot, this would be just another in a long line of Woody's Pygmalion-inspired bittersweet romantic comedies, but it turns out their relationship is just the first act. Starring: Carolyn McCormick, Evan Rachel Wood, Henry Cavill and others. "Whatever Works" Movie Review -- You can be prolific or you can be consistent, and long ago Woody Allen chose the former. The cost of the trade-off, though, went up over time.
Trailer Whatever Works
At first, a great picture would be followed by a mediocre one. The Family and Christian Guide to Movie Reviews and Entertainment News. WHATEVER WORKS is perhaps Woody Allen's meanest, most self-righteous and most political movie.
The story is narrated by a retired, misanthropic physicist. Whatever Works explores the relationship between a crotchety misanthrope, Boris and a naïve, impressionable young runaway from the south, Melody. When Melody's uptight parents arrive in New York to rescue her, they are quickly drawn into wildly unexpected romantic entanglements. Whatever Works finds him working with Larry David, a writer and comedian who, having created the sitcom Seinfeld, can be said to have expanded While Allen's wanderings in the wilderness of Europe have been interesting to follow, it seems to me that those movies have seen him lose his Jewishness.