Woody Allen's new comedy is not a good movie. Plain and simple. The script is sloppy, the timing seems off, the acting is stiff and unbelievable. That aside, I really enjoyed seeing it.
Taken from a script he supposedly wrote in the 70s, the film is about New York misanthrope Boris Yelnikoff. Boris, played by Larry David (who's done a bunch of stuff I've never seen, or seen very little of like being a writer for Seinfeld), is the obvious "Woody Allen" character. He's neurotic, cynical and brilliant (a fact pointed out frequently by Evan Rachel Wood's nearly brain-dead character). He seems like a very funny actor, but he simply forces the lines and gestures in an uncomfortable way. Luckily, this never actually is a problem, as in the opening sequence, Boris makes it known that he's in a movie by directly addressing the audience and talking to the other characters about us. It's very nice of him to notice us there.
None of the characters are especially believable. Wood, the other lead, plays a southern runaway who stays with Boris, initially against his wishes. Her character is as dumb as an especially dull rock; a direct contrast with Boris, a former Columbia professor of quantum physics. Clearly, love is in the air between these two.
I could go on about what made this movie so bad, but simply put, it's very enjoyable. The one-liners are constant and witty, and even though Allen has even pilfered old jokes from himself (at one point Boris sarcastically claims to play for the Yankees, only to constantly correct Wood's character whenever she mentions his former athletic career, in the same way that Woody Allen's character has to continually assert that he never played in the philharmonic, as his character in Take The Money And Run claimed when first meeting the love of his life), the film succeeds as being good fun. Anyway, with the weather the way that it is right now, you really shouldn't need an excuse to sit in a cool, air-conditioned theater.
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