Hollywood Ending (2002)

Simply Perfect

Memorable, crazy movie

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Easy to sum this picture up: Movie-about-movies + Woody Allen plays himself again + Deus Ex Machina happy ending. Foolish add-ins like a rat-eating rock musician son who Woody, playing the same nebbish as always, allegedly took fishing as a child. I realized I wasn't getting any enjoyment from the film when it took me three separate logins on HBONow to finish it.

Where can we start? I just saw this film on HBO. I know its 15 years old but any good film will hold up over time (ie Casablanca). This might have been better without Woody playing the lead. It seems so over acted. He is more whiny than ever. Mark Rydell is very good. As a filmmaker myself I see the "reality" of the process but I don't think he would have ever gotten the job in the first place. The photography is the most orange I have ever seen. If I shot a film like this, I would be fired. It costs 16 million and made back about 4 million. Very few filmmakers can make films that lose money although today very few films are making a profit. I now understand why he started going to France to make his films. For some reason they make money when shot over there. When you hear a lot of voice over it shows that the film is in trouble and the direction and script aren't enough to tell a story. Someone has to explain whats going on. I like his early work that was very funny but this is not funny. The Chinese cameraman bit is funny for a minute, this really happens on movies. It seems he tries to create these love stories where he is always with a beautiful woman which would never happen in real life. He is a very proficient filmmaker. It seems the stories are very much the same. The jazz soundtracks are getting old too.

As said before, Woody Allen is a very acquired taste. To me he has made a lot of great films, a handful of masterpieces and while there have been some disappointments, while there are films of his yet to see, none of them have been terrible. Hollywood Ending has often been considered lesser Allen, and while it is not a masterpiece in any shape or form(like Annie Hall, Manhattan, Crimes and Misdeameanours, Hannah and Her Sisters, Husbands and Wives and Purple Rose of Cairo, Zelig is also very close to being one) and does fall short of great it is not among the bottom(so far What's Up Tiger Lily, To Rome with Love, Celebrity, Anything Else and Cassandra's Dream, although all of them had a fair share of redeeming qualities). Hollywood Ending is imperfect, the blindness joke has been much criticised and I have to agree, it is a joke so stretched out it becomes very tiring, the pacing as a result in the last act lost momentum and credibility went out the window. Much more could have been done with the subplot and relationship of Allen's character and his son, it was pretty much in the background and like a secondary subplot and it was a subplot that if more prominent could have given the film more heart and it would have made their relationship more interesting, in the end it felt under-baked. On the other hand, Hollywood Ending as always with Allen is very well-directed and looks fabulous with cinematography that is colourful and dreamlike. Hollywood Ending aside from the blindness joke is a very entertaining film, the one-liners are just delicious, Val has the best lines and they are just hilarious, and the gags are very characteristic of Allen and are well-engineered. As ever with Woody Allen, the film also has a lot to say about various subjects and explores them in an insightful and sometimes self-mocking way(that is sometimes and understandably considered self-indulgence). The story up till the last act has relationships and issues that we can identify with strongly, is well-paced and there is plenty of compelling story-telling. Hollywood Ending is expertly played with the best performance coming from Tea Leoni, who is immensely charming with very easy comic timing, closely followed by Woody Allen himself, who makes the most of his lines and delivers them in a way that makes them even funnier. Treat Williams is always a joy and Debra Messing looks as though she's enjoying herself. Admittedly some of the cast should have had more to work with, such as George Hamilton, but they are no less impressive. On the whole, Hollywood Ending has its flaws and Allen has done better work but it is an entertaining film in a lot of ways. 7/10 Bethany Cox

A pretty weak one-note joke film from Woody Allen during a period where he made a string of some of his most mediocre movies. It's not as bad as the following year's woeful "Anything Else," perhaps the very worst film he's ever made, but it's close.Allen plays a Hollywood director who's struck with a case of temporary blindness. You can imagine the kinds of jokes that ensue. Allen's reliance on vaudevillian humor had stopped being charming by this point and was just anachronistic. But no worries -- two years later he would experience a creative reboot and give us "Match Point," one of his best films and enough to erase movies like "Hollywood Ending" from our memories.Grade: C-