The Film Junkie

Sometimes chick flicks can warm your heart and give you a nice lift for the day, other times it kind of feels like the studios have used a calculator to try and squeeze as much money from you as possible. 

Here they take the idea that Diane Keaton has scored big with ‘The Family Stone’ (2005) and ‘Somethings Gotta Give’ (2003), so they combine her characters from those two films to make Daphne.    They also surmise that teens adore Mandy Moore from her music career as well as her charming roles in ‘A Walk To Remember’ (2002) and ‘Chasing Liberty’ (2004) and thus will see her in this.  They cast Lauren Graham to tap into the ‘Gilmore Girls’ crowd and Stephen Collins for the ‘Seventh Heaven’ fans.  They calculate that by their math this movie should draw a big crowd…however there’s something they forgot: a story.

Instead we are given a lame plot wherein Keaton is a mother too involved in her daughter’s lives, in fact so much so that none of them are able to make a single decision without one another.  This was done far more believably in ‘The Upside of Anger’ (2005) with Joan Allen and her trio of daughters.  Here it grates on the nerves.

The love story is horrendously predictable (would anyone stay with Tom Everett Scott’s schmuck character past the uber-controlling first date??).  This film is simply offensive to women in that it thinks that we need little more than likable cast members and a cute boy to get us through.  Women need story, passion and suprises because, surprisingly, we are people too.

Do your own math.

Grade: C-

I remember watching this movie as a child and loving the fact that for the first time I was seeing a woman taking control of her life.  Sure, she is bogged down by the child she inherited and the job she has allowed to run her life, but she holds the reins.  When the men in her life fall by the wayside and the job prospects fall through, J.C. (Diane Keaton) finds her way back.  As a child this gave me hope that no matter what happened as long as I was smart and had control I would find my way.

20 years later this film still holds up.  Sure the music is cheesy, the costumes are dated and James Spader is young and beautiful, but the issue of the working mother is just as important and hot button now.  There are very few films that have had the guts to view a single mom as anything other than pitiful, to allow a woman to choose the life of single motherhood and prosper because of theat decision both emotionally and economically.  I suppose that is why I still love this movie, no matter its many faults and the over-acting from Keaton in many early scenes, the message is one of hope and of a world where we can have it all.  How can you say no to that?

Grade: B+

This brilliant romantic comedy tells the story of Allan (Woody Allen), a movie geek and film review writer, who is left by his wife and forced to re-enter the world of dating.  However Allan has a terribly skewed perception of what love should be due to his obsession with old movies.  He is counseled by Humphrey Bogart who follows him around and tells him just what to say.

Allen and Diane Keaton, as his best friend’s wife, are a great team once again.  They instinctively understand one another and play off each other perfectly.

The references are completely fitting and for some reason I totally identify with this man for whom cinema is the only reality…don’t know why…

This movie is funny, sweet, romantic, harsh and really well made.  See it.

Grade: A

I was beginning to question whether or not I really do love Woody Allen movies as much as I think I do, and then this little treat came along and assured me that Allen is a genius.

This film deals with the modern existential dilemma of life, love and death set in Czarist Russia during the Napoleonic Wars.  Allen plays Boris, a man forced into the war and many other strange situations when all he really wants to do is marry his cousin (“twice removed”) Sonia (the angelic Diane Keaton).  It is equal parts absurdity and Fellini homage, a feat that could only really be attempted by Allen.

Allen struts through this comedy like Buster Keaton with Groucho Marx’s humour and the sensibility of a writer raised on Sid Caesar (as Allen was).  He is the pathetic little man, like Keaton, who is able to acheive greatness with a sparkling wit and scandalous double entendre, like Marx, and make a scathing cultural commentary, like Caesar, at the same time.

Diane Keaton matches Allen with her own brand of absurdity.  Where Mia Farrow is Allen’s neurotic muse and Scarlett Johansson seems now to be his sexual muse, Keaton is, undoubtedly, his comedic and intellectual muse.  There is one scene (pictured below) in which the two of them are caught in the same frame bouncing back and forth through their subconscious melodrama that it pure ridiculous hilarity.

It seems like it wouldn’t work, but it is one of my favorite Allen comedies.

Grade: A-

This film sets out to be a look into the interiors of everything surrounding a wealthy Northeastern family.  The film practically displays the obvious art direction and bland characters on a table for the audience to pick at.  Once again, Woody Allen misses the mark.

The idea of the interior as a female place is never really dealt with in this film; instead the interior is a repressed and beige place, representing the matriarch (Geraldine Page) of the family.  A woman so overspent in hiding her emotions that she seems to have a complete breakdown when anything even slightly changes in her world.

The daughters of the family fit neatly into their constructed categories: the poet (Diane Keaton), the actress (Kristin Griffith), and the muddled genius (Mary Beth Hurt).  These women have their men and their issues, but all their storylines are dull and redundant. We never get to know these women, despite trying, because (despite the title) though they talk a lot, they never let us into their interiors.

It sometimes amazes me how little Woody Allen understands women.

Grade: C