gavin6942 In New York in 1928, a struggling playwright (John Cusack) is forced to cast a mobster's talentless girlfriend (Jennifer Tilly) in his latest drama in order to get it produced. The film received numerous Oscar nominations. Just in the acting category, we have: Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor – Chazz Palminteri. Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress – Jennifer Tilly. Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress – Dianne Wiest. Interestingly, Wiest won. Personally, I would have given the award to Tilly between the two of them.Although I love Woody Allen and I tend to enjoy mob stories (writing mob history is how I bay my bills), this somehow is not one of my favorite Woody tales. I think it is the lack of a real intellectual undercurrent. There is some talk of "the art and the artist" and even Nietzsche gets tossed around a bit, but this seems a bit light. Of course, when he is pumping out a movie a year for 50 years, I suppose not every one is going to be a philosophical gem.

SnoopyStyle In the late 20's NYC, idealistic playwright David Shayne (John Cusack) is trying to get his play on Broadway. He gets finance from ruthless gangster Nick Valenti but he has to cast Nick's talentless loud-mouthed girlfriend Olive Neal (Jennifer Tilly). He is horrified that he's whoring himself out. Her surprisingly-insightful escort Cheech (Chazz Palminteri), not Mr. Cheech, starts making great suggestions. David falls for aging leading star Helen Sinclair (Dianne Wiest) and cheats on his girlfriend Ellen (Mary-Louise Parker). Olive has an affair with leading man Warner Purcell (Jim Broadbent).It's an irreverent Woody Allen movie taking a sharp jab at the backstage world with a healthy dose of mob violence. There are some hilarious moments but I do want more. I keep thinking that the movie is on the verge of great madcap fun. This is a pretty good Woody movie just below some of his greats.

mnpollio A film so criminally overrated and staggeringly unfunny as to defy description. Allen takes a very promising concept and somehow manages to craft a film that is devoid of hilarity.Idealistic playwright John Cusack finds the backing to mount his play from a gangster. The catch is that in return the gangster's bimbo mistress Jennifer Tilly is to be cast as a psychiatrist in the play. Henchman Chazz Palminteri is dispatched to babysit Tilly and coach her in acting, but in the process makes suggestions to Cusack's play that dramatically improve its quality.This should be hilarious - yet it is not. I don't think I cracked a smile once during the entire course of the film. I have begun to believe that it is utterly impossible for Allen to write genuinely likable or appealing characters - even within the constraints of a broad fable such as this one. Nearly everyone we see on screen is selfish, obnoxious and nasty.Too many scenes are directed as though by chaos. For instance, I lost count of how many scenes start or ended with a group of characters stationed at different points of the set and shrieking their lines at each other, often at the same time, so that the scene is reduced to a wall of incoherent noise.While Allen thankfully delivers us from taking on the leading man duties again, Cusack is simply too bland and uninteresting to hold attention or anchor the action. Tracey Ullman, Mary-Louise Parker and Jim Broadbent are wasted in underwritten roles. Dianne Wiest gets to ham it up as a legendary Broadway diva brought in to headline the show. While she throws herself body and soul into the part, her lampoon of the haughty dowager becomes repetitive. This is a fault of the screenplay more than the actress. She is playing a caricature and one that we have seen done better and funnier in other films. The first time she strikes a pose like Greta Garbo and admonishes Cusack "Don't speak!" is barely amusing. By the umpteenth time she has done this throughout the film, it has ceased to have any comedic impact at all.Apparently the majority of the comedy is supposed to come from the interactions between Palminteri's flustered gun man and Tilly's bimbo. Unfortunately, their scenes are incredibly unpleasant. Palminteri is stuck playing a stereotypical goombah (with the twist that he writes better than Cusack) and Tilly is the quintessential floozy. Both of them hate each - and I mean they really hate each other. Their line readings are loud and shrill and generate all of the charm of a legion of car alarms going off at the same time. There is almost a collective sigh of relief when their scenes conclude and their dialog pretty much goes along the lines of "Why don't you shut up!", "No, you shut up!", "You shut up!", and "You shut up yourself!" Oh, the hilarity. It must have taken Allen all of five minutes to fabricate this winning dialog.By the time the film itself rolls to its unsurprising conclusion, one realizes that you don't care about any of these characters and you want back the time that Allen and his minions have stolen from your life. A real endurance test akin to dental surgery without benefit of Novacaine.

runamokprods Not deep, but very, very funny. Wonderfully written and splendidly acted, especially by Diane Wiest in a wild and hysterical role. John Cusack does his usual extremely solid work as the straight man holing it all togetherAmazing 1930s production design by Santo Loquasto. The film has a nice, dark edge to off-set the wacky, farcical tone. The very end is a bit sappy, but it also leaves the film with an interesting moral complexity.Not quite great Woody Allen, but extremely good Woody Allen, which means great by most film-making standards.