Reel Critics

Peggy Rogers

“Hollywood Ending” is a movie about the people who make the movies.

Woody Allen lampoons movie moguls, producers, agents, and aspiring

starlets from the point of view of a creative but emotionally unbalanced

film director.

Val (Woody Allen) has watched his filmmaking career crumble since his

wife ran off with his studio boss 10 years earlier. Coincidentally, Val’s

chance to direct another movie and thus revive his career means working

with his ex-wife, Ellie (Tea Leoni) as his producer on the new film.

While Val squirms at the very thought of working closely with Ellie in

the coming weeks, a far greater problem befalls him. A problem that

threatens the entire production and certainly could ruin his chances of

directing a successful film.

Woody Allen films don’t attract fence sitters. You either enjoy his

movies or loathe them. Allen consistently plays the same self-absorbed

nebbish with hypochondriacal tendencies as he does in every one of his

films. Always lacking self-confidence, impossible to live with, yet

beautiful women can’t live without him. Allen’s movies are like summer

stock in a small town, but instead of seeing the same cast of actors play

different characters, you see the same cast of characters played by

different actors in many different movies. For instance, the ditsy love

interest and hooker from “Mighty Aphrodite” is now a ditsy love interest

and actress in “Hollywood Ending” (played by Debra Messinger of “Will and

Grace”).

However, two aspects of Allen’s film trademarks are beginning to wear

thin. The jokes get repeated or exaggerated for too long. During a

production meeting with his ex-wife for example Val repeatedly changes

the subject back and forth between which camera man to hire and Ellie’s

leaving him 10 years prior. Once or twice is funny, four to five times

gets boring. The second aspect is Allen’s age versus the female lead’s

age. The age gap has advanced from Woody being old enough to be her

father to old enough to being her grandfather.

A strength of the film is the supporting cast and characters. Mark

Rydell, Treat Williams and George Hamilton add value and laughs to the

story. It’s Val’s agent, played by Rydell, who devises a wild plot to

cover up the neurotic phobia that afflicts the director on the eve of the

film production. As Val’s agent, the gesture may be one of protecting his

15% fee rather than helping to revive his career. At times, though, the

Hollywood inside jokes are too obscure for viewers to enjoy, such as the

latest craze in hiring foreign cinematographers who do not speak English.

“Hollywood Ending” won’t disappoint Woody Allen’s fans, though it

won’t generate new ones.

* PEGGY J. ROGERS, 39, produces commercial videos and documentaries.