Half And Half

Woody Allen's Crimes And Misdemeanors is generally held in high regard. I hold it in semi-high regard at best. It's a bifurcated film, half decent, half tiresome.

What's decent is the humorous (by later Woody standards) part, where loser documentarian Cliff (Woody Allen) gets a job through family connections to do a story on successful TV producer Lester (Alan Alda). They both fight over Lester's employee Halley.

Alda is especially good, because while he plays an obnoxious blowhard, he's for the most part convincing. He says and does things that a glib EP who's used to getting his way would say and do.  He's oily, but you can still see why he's a success, in TV and with women. Meanwhile, Allen's character (I think--maybe Woody sees it differently) isn't set up as the obviously superior person, smarter and with better taste. He's actually a bit of a snob, not the nicest guy, and not nearly as smart as he thinks. The film gets its laughs at Lester's expense, but it doesn't stack the deck.

Meanwhile, the "serious" half--the faux Bergman half--has Judah (Martin Landau) order a hit on his lover (Anjelica Huston) before she spills the beans. He feels anguish after the deed is done, but as time passes, learns to accept it, and never pays any price. (This wouldn't be the last time Woody confuses getting away with it for depth.)

As always, Woody Allen's idea of serious drama is characters sitting around talking about their deep feelings, when they're not busy telling us what they're about to do. While these scenes go on I spend most of my time looking at the decor to see how the upper middle class live in and around Manhattan.