oOoBarracuda Larry David stars as the perfect "Woody Allen character", a term I dislike as I don't find Woody Allen to be attempting to inject himself in each of his movies as much as I understand him to simply be writing characteristics he knows about. It's a losing battle, I've learned, to try to convince those I know to join me in an effort to change the American lexicon so for the purpose of understanding I'll say there is no one better to play a "Woody Allen character" than Larry David. I'm a huge fan of the neurotic curmudgeon I first met in David's show Curb Your Enthusiasm and always thought he would be great in a Woody Allen film. Imagine my delight to learn he was already in one! In Whatever Works, David plays a self-described misanthrope with a wholly negative view of the human race and spends a majority of his time baffled that he has to live within it. Larry David stars alongside Evan Rachel Wood, and Patricia Clarkson as the women who enter his life and possibly change it. Whatever Works is perhaps the most hard-hitting illustration of Woody Allen's outlook on life. Woody pulls no punches in Whatever Works, he does what works for him and his artistic expression, examining life's unanswered questions all the while with a half- smile and comedic touch. Forty-three years after his directorial debut, Woody Allen is still questioning the purpose of life, not to provide an answer, but rather to be content with its perceived meaninglessness.Boris Yelnikoff (Larry David) walks with a limp under the strain of his Nobel prize worthy brain and the heavy ache of seeing the world's most infantile beings walk among him. In reality, the limp is a souvenir from a failed suicide attempt in which Boris flung himself through a window only to be saved by a canopy hanging below. Both his friends and the "inchworms" he teaches chess to know about Boris' deep contempt of the human race. A former professor of Quantum Mechanics at Columbia University, Boris is still distraught over losing the Nobel Prize that should have been his. One of his many existential crises led to Boris quitting his job at Columbia and divorcing his college sweetheart only to move into a rundown apartment and teach chess to children in the park as a means of income. There exists no bright side in the life of Boris, and as he constantly tells the audience: he is the only one that truly sees what's going on in the world. Boris' careful routine existence is thrown into chaos when he meets a simple-minded religious girl, Melody Celestine (Evan Rachel Wood) who recently ran away from her home in Mississippi to make a better life for herself in New York. Little did she know, Melody found the last person in the world that would encourage her of a better life to be found. Boris, a severe germophobe who insists on singing "Happy Birthday" to himself twice as he washes his hands to ensure peak cleanliness surprises everyone by allowing Melody to stay in his home while she saves money for an apartment. Boris, a naturally anti social recluse begins to not only enjoy Melody's company but appreciates once again having a hand to hold during his many existential panic attacks. In the most unlikely of circumstances, Boris and Melody marry. For a while, the marriage works for both of them, with Boris enjoying a sounding board for his many ideas regarding life, and Melody enjoying broadening her mind and pushing herself to speak in more than clichés. An unexpected outcome is the positive impact Melody is having on Boris, bringing him closer to actually enjoying aspects of the human race. Boris is written as someone who lives life in a way that convinces others that he doesn't need or want anyone close to him. Boris spends so much time asserting his dominance over the entire human race, in part, I believe, to keep people away from him. Boris obviously struggles with emotions and ultimately seems to be afraid of being a disappointment to anyone close to him. The most promising way to ensure you never let anyone down is to never let anyone close enough to be dissatisfied by you. A deeper character analysis of someone who seems to have no redeeming qualities reveals a broken man who has tried to fill the crevasses of his existence with false positives because he finds himself unable to rationalize the mysteries of life. Boris' "whatever works" motto of doing whatever one wants in life as long as they are not causing harm to others may be enough to get him through the day-to-day, but it is obviously not enough to keep him from waking up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. I've always appreciated the way Woody Allen explores the psyche of his characters. All the way back to Manhattan, we see Woody doing the same thing he is doing in Whatever Works; illustrating characters who shut themselves off from relationships before they ever have a chance to begin, then, self-sabotaging those relationships after they have a chance to start. There are shelves all over the world full of films that are happily romantic and only superficially question the motives of others in exchange for a happy ending. The reality of life, however, is that not everyone enjoys a happy ending and Woody Allen's consistent exploration of human emotion is something I will forever appreciate. We're all searching for what Boris found in his 1:00 a.m. viewings of Fred Astaire that he found to comfort himself out of panic attacks. We all wish to find a purpose for our lives, engaging enough to bring us happiness and allow us to forget that everything ends.

dnlmonaco As a former New Yorker myself with some understanding of the culture of the City and State from where I hail, I feel I can give an unbiased and honest assessment of Woody Allen's ten billionth love letter to the Big Apple. And that assessment can be summed up as *fart noise*.Seriously though, this movie is a god awful exercise in navel gazing and seems to exist for no other reason than to confirm every terrible thing anyone ever said about the East Coast.Larry David plays a thinly veiled Woody Allen stand in who immediately finds love and sex with a woman forty years younger than him while constantly whining about his life in a way that makes both his character and everyone else's character seem unlikable. David's character in any other movie would seem like an anti-Semitic dog whistle if not for the fact that Allen is himself a walking, talking Jewish stereotype so the most I can say is that the film probably isn't a hate crime against the Jews. The running plot of the film is thin and annoying but it can be summed up as an insult to both New Yorkers and to Mid-westerners at the same time. New Yorkers should be scandalized by Allen's assessment of their day to day lives as nothing more than a series of hippie/hipster/radical liberal stereotypes who gaze into their navels so hard that it gives them eye problems. While I'm sure there's some truth to these thinly veiled stereotypes, their use in this manner seems to surpass satire and become a grating affront. Meanwhile, Allen's assessment of people from Flyover states seems to swing between infuriating to disgusting as he assesses these poor, unwashed ignoramuses as both repressed Luddites and easily seduced bumpkins that will abandon all of their closely held beliefs and relationships at the mere mention of the siren song of New York's shopping and baby boomer three ways (seriously, that's literally how one character decides to move to New York permanently). At times, you wonder if Woody Allen has ever met anyone from west of Staten Island or north of Yonkers. Also Allen's normally tight direction seems to have sat this movie out as he seems incapable of getting a decent performance from normally talented actors like Evan Rachel Wood or Patricia Clarkson. In fact I feel sorry for Wood since this entire film seems like one long creepy love letter to young flesh as glimpsed by an elderly horn dog. Henry Cavill shows up to be his usual, boring slab of meat self because even Woody Allen can't summon up the self delusion needed to believe Evan Rachel Wood's character would remain with Larry David's character. Generally the whole film seems designed to get a quick pay check and to allow some of Allen's few remaining fans to leave the nursing home for a few hours. It's just a really bad movie, frankly.

osmangokturk Boris is a kind of the central figure in the movie. He touches everybody and change their life and make them happy, his life changes as well. It's kind of that Boris a supernatural, he knows the meaning of life and knows everything as he know that this is a movie and some people are out there watching them. It should not be surprising that he is depicted as a genius physicist. That would understand the universe and abolish the religion.In the movie, while some's life change to a more untraditional and deviated sexual life, some's go in the "right" direction. Deep religious mother enters into a life of 2 husbands and a wife living together and father enters into a gay relation, whereas the daughter moves from marrying a very old man to a similar age boy friend. So what Woody Allen would want to tell us? Life is unhappy, but after some unexpected coincidences people find their matches ? Reason leads to the wrong matches while the chance produces happy relations? Both premises are broken by the case of Melody. Initially Melody seems to go via the chance and later continue with by match of reason and plan. But one can say Melody and her boy friend were the only young couple, other being elders. Anyway we can't conclude any outcome on these. We can't say that Woody tries to favor perverted relations, because what Boris and Melody finally do is quite acceptable to the society and conventional . I may say the movie is a harsh critic to religious dogmas and taboos and it highlights the the fact that chance could create a happy lives. At least it has a well organized down to earth story and playing is amazing.

ElMaruecan82 In "Manhattan", Woody Allen's character broke up with his girlfriend, a young student played by Mariel Hemingway. Despite reasonable arguments, her reaction showed that she genuinely cared for him, and it was such a devastating moment we didn't even care about their age gap. At the end, he realized he made a mistake, when confronting her again, she told him to have more faith in people. He got the message and smiled, if it's meant to work again, it will.Three decades later, "Whatever Works", conveyed a similar message within an unlikely couple: Boris (Larry David) and Melody (Evan Rachel Wood), Boris is probably 20 years older than Allen in "Manhattan" but there's no moral condemnation of any sort in the film whose title almost works as an alibi. "Whatever Works" is an invitation to free our mind from moral, social or religious prohibitions in the name of happiness. So not to be too cynical, as long as Melody was 21, it could work. But not without conditions, whatever was driving Melody's attraction toward Boris, it just had to be "good reasons" from our standpoint, were they?Melody grew up in a dysfunctional family with an overbearing God-fearing mother and a straight- laced yet unfaithful father, so she jumped at the first man who would be the perfect antithesis to the only adult models she had in her life: a quantum physics expert and an intellectual malcontent. Love is all about filling gaps, and the way the characters evolve in the film shows that one's only happy when he filled the right gap. Take the father (Ed Begley Jr.), he raised a family to hide a latent homosexuality, once he admitted it, he knew exactly what was missing in his life and so he was happy. Boris filled a temporary gap in Melody's life.The purpose of these two persons being together might seem ridiculous but "Whatever Works" puts the whole concept of 'ridiculous' into perspective. Something that seems preposterous or unacceptable for a character becomes a new standard of life and a source of intellectual or emotional blooming later. Yes, Boris can't stop bragging about his superior intellect or complaining about the superficiality and pointlessness of life, but maybe Melody was going through a phase where it had a positive effect on her, whatever works. If Melody's mother (Patricia Clarkson) wants enjoys a "ménage à trois", why should her daughter restrict her own sentimental area to a specific demographic group?It sounds rational to have Melody with one her age, but you can't reason with a film whose main protagonist committed suicide because he couldn't stand the perfection of his previous wife. Boris is such a complex character that his lack of appeal can't be reduced to the 'age' factor, the man is simply misusing his intelligence by being totally disillusioned about life and hostile toward any human being who can't reach his almighty mind, even throwing chess pieces on children he calls "inchworms". With Melody, he can't do the usual shtick because she admits his "superiority", so, the poor guy is disarmed. And coming from a cheerful and adorably naive little creature, well, if not his heart, Boris' ego couldn't say 'no'. Then they marry, he starts to appreciate her company, until she becomes indispensable to his own well-being. It's very revealing that in the second act, he starts smiling more and being kinder to her, the other side of the coin is that she also grew some maturity, enough to be able to think for herself and question her choices. Melody then understands she lived with Boris as a reaction to her past, and that move is typical from girls of her age. He was brilliant within his own grouchiness and she felt "completed" by that intellect she could plagiarize on his absence, with more or less credibility. But even by supposing they had to cancel their marriage, I wish it had been done differently.When the film started, I didn't know where it was going exactly, yet the story was absorbing in a way I just stopped caring and wanted to embrace the film's unpredictability with fun and enthusiasm. As ludicrous as it seemed that the two would marry, I was ready to accept it. Why should an old curmudgeon like Boris have an adorable and loving wife like Melody? Well, to every "Why", there's a "Why not"? Then the mother came and did her best to wreck the marriage, without even letting her daughter make the choice by herself, and even when she adopted a more free-spirited lifestyle, she was still trying to put that Randy James in the arms of Melody. That it worked, and easily, was a kind of letdown to me. I felt cheated.Good old Hollywood again, the whole film has been such a hymn to unconventional happiness that there was something frustratingly cliché about the pretty young couple. And when she had to tell the truth to Boris, he had that face that was saying "who am I kidding?". Melody had good reasons to leave him, but I wish it was because of a personal choice, not because she met your average handsome smooth talker, and certainly not her mother's protégé. At least, Boris has always been sincere with her, Randy gave his best shot, brought her to his boat, gave her wine, pretended stuff, it's not like he didn't exploit some of her naivety.All was well that ended well for everybody, and even Boris seemed to have found a soul-mate after a second suicide, but I wish there was 'a catch' with the medium or some punchline, not just a last- minute heart-filler. And I wish Melody had dumped Randy to enjoy her new independence, deserving more than the guy sent by her mother, another guy, another girl, two guys, or one of Boris' age for irony's sake, anything that would have called for 'whatever works' as a conclusion.