Review: Allen fails to do ‘Hollywood’ justice

Geoff Carter

Friday, May 3, 2002 | 10:03 a.m.

"Hollywood Ending"

Grade: **

Starring: Woody Allen, Tea Leoni, Treat Williams and Debra Messing.

Screenplay: Woody Allen.

Director: Woody Allen.

Rated: PG-13 for some drug references and sexual material.

Running time: 114 minutes.

Movie times: http://www.vegas.com/movies/

In a magazine interview a few years back, Chris Rock said he'd like to work with Woody Allen. "Big fan of the Woodster," quote unquote.

At this point, using all my power as an all-but-anonymous film critic, I'd advise Allen to take Rock up on his generous offer. If he still has it in him (and seeing as the fine "Sweet and Lowdown" was just three years ago, I think he does), a collaboration with Rock will likely help kick it out.

It would be better than what we're getting, anyway. Allen's latest, "Hollywood Ending," is a drawn-out, trying film that offers a few genuine laughs and a boatload of groaners. Remember the way Allen's Oscar Night speech skidded off the road a few times? It's the same deal here, but spread over nearly two hours. At least Rock's dud films have the decency to end before the 90-minute mark.

Writer/director Allen plays Val Waxman, a washed-up director whose glory days have long since faded; he's gone from winning awards to shooting deodorant commercials in Canada. He's a hypochondriac (again?) with a ditzy live-in girlfriend half his age (again?) and a variety pack of neuroses. But hope springs eternal: Val's ex-wife, Ellie (Tea Leoni), has become a successful studio executive and wants to use Val for a picture that could restore his reputation.

There are only a few snags. The head of the studio making the picture, Hal (Treat Williams), seduced Val's wife away in the first place. Val promptly torpedoes himself by hiring a director of photography who speaks only Mandarin ("He's done a lot of work ... with the Red Army"), and casts his girlfriend, Lori (Debra Messing), in a small but pivotal part. And in a poetically fit psychosomatic episode, Val is stricken blind the night before shooting begins.

At first, Val asks his agent, Al (Mark Rydell), to help him around; he needs the picture too badly to admit he can't see. When Al is banned from the set, he asks the cameraman's translator (Barney Cheng) for help. Cheng, in a small role, handily steals his scenes; his could have been one of the most interesting characters in the picture, if Allen's instincts weren't off.

Instead, Allen tries to rip into Hollywood, which is a dodgy maneuver for someone who spends so little time there. At the beginning of the picture Leoni says of Val, "The streets of New York are in his marrow," yet most of "Hollywood Ending" takes place on soundstages; we see very little of the streets Val's supposed to be celebrating (and that Allen flat-out owns).

The concept itself is limiting. Aside from Robert Altman's "The Player," movies about the film business rarely work: either they dumb things down to the point that no one believe's anything's really being done, or they're insular to a fault and only the 2,000 people whose tiny names fill the credits will understand what's being said.

Allen tries to play it both ways, but neither really works. The poster for "Hollywood Ending" is better than the picture: It pictures some 50 Hollywood endings, from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" to "Bridge on the River Kwai." Allen should reconsider where he's coming from, because recently it's been hard to appreciate where he ends up.