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Overall Rating
 Awesome: 58.75%
Worth A Look: 8.75%
Just Average: 15%
Pretty Crappy: 5%
Sucks: 12.5%
3 reviews, 62 user ratings
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| Annie Hall |
by Carina Hoskisson
"If you’re 18, you’re not going to get it, go rent “The Wedding Planner”"
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I hate romantic comedies. They are saccharine to the point of suicide on glucose. But I keep watching them, like a ten car pile-up. Its not masochism, I think I’m just looking for something to relate to instead of death-by-chocolate-cake to. But Annie Hall is the exception, a movie that delivers on comedy, and yes romance, but doesn’t go begging for suspension of thought to entertain.The movie focuses on the various women that go through comedian Alvie Singer’s (Woody Allen) life culminating in his relationship with Annie Hall. Hall, played by Diane Keaton, is a complex woman, aware of her inadequacies and diminishing naiveté. She grows and shifts into a woman more interesting each frame. I would argue that Keaton has never and may never deliver another performance that would make this one fall away. This is also a Woody Allen movie that typifies his careful dialogue, but that broadens his humor to an accessible level.
Despite the title, this movie isn’t just about Annie Hall it’s a portrait of one affair as drawn on the entire canvas of Alvie’s life. I suspect that what makes this movie such a classic, is the layers before ‘Alvie & Annie’ and after. Lovers, spouses and friends populate the story with the authentic narrative of a life spent in, out and searching for love.
Every time I watch Annie Hall it gets better, more layered, more poignant. The story of a relationship that doesn’t work isn’t anything new. Most films that try that theme end up either in an ostentatious climactic tragedy like The End of the Affair or ridiculous and melodramatic like Affair to Remember. Nothing touches the quiet reality of a love that just softly stops, not in some grand explosion of temperament, but in the true stillness of an unbinding. And just like in real life & not the movies, Alvie and Annie meet again without igniting a race car engine love, and act like adults who relive the best part of the friendship that kept their love in flame over coffee in Manhattan, yet part in the sobriety of an obsolete love.
And damn, Annie Hall is funny. Outright jokes, physical comedy and even flashbacks play like movies in which the characters observe themselves. The variety will make the movie appeal to almost everyone who would be drawn to a romantic comedy, but still satisfies the itch of viewers with actual intellect.Annie Hall is a romantic comedy. It is also a love story, a Borscht Belt routine, a tragedy and a documentary. The older you get the better the film gets.
If you’re 18, you’re not going to get it, go rent “The Wedding Planner” and call it a night.
link directly to this review at http://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com/review.php?movie=1935&reviewer=44
originally posted: 06/18/02 18:26:32
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USA
02-Apr-1977 (PG)
DVD: 28-Apr-1998
UK
19-Oct-2001 (15)
DVD: 10-Jul-2000
Australia
02-Jul-1977 (M)
DVD: 29-Sep-1977
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