Anything Else (2003)

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Christina Ricci's the sexiest most gorgeous girl ever. Her panty scenes in this are intense. This is a miniature, Woody Allen, Danny DeVito, Christina Ricci inspired review. Jason Biggs looks like an NFL linebacker in this. Is that that funny, not really. Did I really need to add that last line about Jason, not really. Now is my review all that miniature, not really, just like Christina. Is there anything else, not really, oh just one more thing, I love Christiiiiiinaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!

Maybe I was too easy on this because the press was so bad that my expectations were low, but it didn't feel like the awful failure I was prepared for. While certainly not up with Allen's best work, and one of his few films I don't feel a need to see a second time, this still had intelligence, wit, good performances and the bittersweet tone about love and sex that Allen does as well as anyone in film history. It was also interesting to see him finally accept his age, and play a supporting role as an often funny, but sometimes disturbingly crazy older mentor to a young man in love, instead of playing the romantic lead himself. Yes, some of the jokes are ancient, and Jason Biggs and Christina Ricci, while both fine, don't have the chemistry of Allen and Keaton in "Annie Hall", which this seems to hearken back to. (I actually thought Ricci was excellent, and quite different from her usual screen persona). But Allen still creates some rich characters, some fun, literate dialogue, and captures how confusing being young and in love with someone who is deeply messed up but sexy and adorable and smart can be. Many of us have been there.

And Christina Ricci is no Diane Keaton. This sad exercise in raiding past glories fails largely from poor casting choices. Woody revisits some well-worn territory here and it just isn't fresh, amusing, insightful, or any of the things that make his movies so special. This one is dull, tedious and belabored. Even Woody Allen's character, Dobel, is obnoxious. Minor characters, usually so well chosen in his films, are overwrought, specifically, Stockard Channing and Danny DeVito. Nothing about this film works. It tries the viewer's patience. Sorry to say, I find this one of Allen's biggest misfires. All is forgiven however, thanks to several subsequent films, like Match Point, Cassandra's Dream, Blue Jasmine.

Anyone not interested in seeing a morose, persistently pessimistic outlook on life should never see a Woody Allen movie. I have loved almost everything he has done since Annie Hall and have even come to later appreciate the sheer boldness and zaniness of early comedies like Sleeper and Love & Death. What I didn't expect, but should have, was how depressing Allen's movies would become as time wore on.Aside from the funny and charming light comedy Small Time Crooks, the 2000's must have been a bad decade for Woody Allen. His dark worldview is never more prevalent than Anything Else, which follows the relationship between a young, neurotic writer and his unpredictable girlfriend. The story is very reminiscent of a Woody Allen movie from the 1970s like Annie Hall or Manhattan. However, Allen has improved his game by no longer casting himself as the lead role, but here casting the very talented Jason Biggs to play the nervous, conscientious writer who finds himself with a girlfriend so unreliable and bizarre that he has to come up with new tactics everyday to keep up and understand her unusual logic and thinking. Biggs and Christina Ricci are both very good in playing roles Allen and Diane Keaton perfected 30 years prior. Indeed, the whole cast has a real smart edge to them that keeps the audience engaged and on the edge of their seat.There isn't much to say about the rest of the film, other than to see it and be careful before seeing it. Woody Allen, like so many other great directors in cinema history, is an acquired taste. Like Bergman, Kubrick, Welles or Wilder, he is so unique and individualistic in the way he creates characters and situations that it makes perfect sense if someone tells me they don't care for Woody Allen movies. I must confess, his last few films have become so negative and pessimistic in their outlook and message that it makes me feel very depressed. And yet, his films are always interesting. Despite his usual downbeat material, Allen is not without reason and it makes for a very interesting debate and thought-provoking discussion if you can find someone. The message of this film is that life is so inexplicable that so often you cannot even try to explain why and how things happen. Though I wish I could, I cannot disagree with that thinking and it is because of this that I continue to seek out Woody Allen films.