Abracada-blah

No new tricks up his sleeve: Magician Sid Waterman a.k.a. "Splendini" (Woody Allen) is relucantly dragged into a murder mystery. Courtesy Odeon Films/Alliance Atlantis.

Ten years ago, Woody Allen thought it sufficiently believable that Julia Roberts would find his romantic overtures charming that he cast himself as her love interest in Everyone Says I Love You. In real life, of course, a springish chicken like Roberts would probably have found the winterish rooster’s moves to resemble the alarming gropes of a dementia-addled patient wheeling around the parking lot of an old folks’ home. But Woody has come to his senses, it seems; in his latest effort, the comic mystery Scoop, sexy, apricot-cheeked Scarlett Johansson calls him “Dad.”

The utterance of this word would appear to mark a turning point for Woody, an indication that reality has been checked. Differences of age, race, class — these real-world bugaboos have most often been subsumed in Allen’s films by his devotion to urban style and Borscht Belt-worthy one-liners. And thus, much of his recent work — The Curse of the Jade Scorpion and Small Time Crooks — has felt out of touch with the brewing confusion in the world; dusty, even. So when Allen unburdened himself of his New York nostalgia and got playful on the streets of London last year with the grim amorality play Match Point, his work felt invigorated. He had tapped open his shell and was writing from the real world, where great artists must at least visit, even if setting up residence can be crippling (Oliver Stone should try fiction, perhaps).

Alas, Dad Shmad. Here’s the thing: Just because you can make a lot of movies doesn’t mean you should. Scoop is throwaway Allen, OK but delete-able, like the 55th birthday snapshot on your digital camera. Johansson plays Sondra Pransky, an American journalism student summering in London, bumbling and geeked-out to resemble a certain filmmaker, right down to the hide-me glasses. When Sondra makes noises about wanting to move from “culture stuff” to “real” journalism, Allen may think he’s taking a shot at the writers who love/hate him. What he doesn’t get is that most film critics are so self-loathing they’ll only nod in weary sympathy.

As a Woody Allen impersonator, Sondra shines; as a journalist, she struggles. While interviewing a greying world-famous movie director, she sleeps with him (so maybe the old director does bed the young starlet after all) instead of getting the story. Her antithesis is Joe Strombel (Ian McShane), Fleet Street’s star investigative reporter, who also happens to be dead. Strombel is every editor’s dream: even in the afterlife, he’s a workaholic who badgers Death — known by his scythe and humourlessness — with his where-when-whys on the boat ride toward…well, who’s to say where this boat is headed? Damnation, possibly, or judging by the rickety craft, the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland.

An American in London: Journalist Sondra Pransky (Scarlett Johansson) meets British aristocrat Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman), who may also be "the Tarot Card Killer." Courtesy Odeon Films/Alliance Atlantis.

In watery purgatory, Strombel learns that a buff London aristocrat, Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman), may be murdering prostitutes and leaving Tarot cards next to his victims — a retro, almost sweet gesture in this post-Saw serial killer world. A third-rate American magician named Splendini (Allen) inadvertently unites Sondra and Strombel, and the dead journalist entrusts the newbie to break the story. For no good reason except the faint, failed hope of comedy, Sondra begs Splendini — a.k.a. Sid Waterman — to pose as her dad and help solve the case.

Two Woodys flapping and stammering is one too many, and I elect the real one to stay. Allen gets a few decent jokes in there — seeing him babbling nervously amongst the ta-ta-ing British upper classes is classic shtick — but Johansson is truly bad. It’s becoming a legitimate worry that the disaffected brunettes she played so wonderfully and so directly in Ghost World and Lost in Translation may be her single, best idea. The girl has built a career around her dearth of moxy, and when called upon to play a perky Rosalind Russell type, she comes up shorthanded. Jackman is necessarily hunky, and so convincingly unknowable in the way of the very privileged that it’s conceivable he could be hiding a secret, but he’s not on screen very much. Instead, Scoop prefers to show a lot of tarot cards, magic boxes and — zzzzz — card tricks.

Famously, Allen’s Annie Hall was originally a mystery, but during the editing process, he snipped that storyline, thereby creating one of cinema’s most famous relationship studies. Good move: I hate magic-mystery Woody. I wanted the mystery cut out of Manhattan Murder Mystery and the magic cut out of Bullets Over Broadway. Allen’s affection for mysteries and magic is probably genuine, a nod to the Depression-era diversions of his youth. But also, the incessant hammering away at these themes is his attempt, I think, to overcome the fallen state that so (charmingly) cripples his characters. It’s a chance to reveal a kind of secular divinity in a world that is, as Allen tells us over and over, godless. If we can solve small mysteries — and ignore the big ones — or make some magic here on Earth, we are inching closer to a version of faith. After all, here is a man who thinks attending a Marx Brothers movie on a Sunday afternoon is a form of salvation.

This is ridiculous, of course. Like clowns, magic is simply irritating, and mysteries are best when they’re brutal and unsolved (Crimes and Misdemeanors, Match Point). Allen needs to stop indulging his old obsessions. In Scoop, the only whodunit worth pursuing is the age-old mystery: Can Woody Allen still make a great film? Only he knows for sure.

Katrina Onstad writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites - links will open in new window.