Scoop
starring Woody Allen, Scarlett Johansson, Hugh Jackman and Ian McShane
written an directed by Woody Allen
Journalism student Sondra Pransky (Johansson) solves a London murder mystery with the help of a vaudeville magician Sidney Waterman, a.k.a. The Great Splendini (Allen). This is a funny, light comedy that is typical Woody Allen. It sounds and feels like the kind of script that he could write in a couple of weeks. After working together in Match Point, Allen wrote this script especially for Johansson.
Woody Allen’s films are technically superb and his actors seem to give consistently excellent performances. I used to be an Allen fan, but not so much these days because his sense of humor is wearing more than a little thin with me and all his movies seem to be the same: the same humor, the same Allen angst, the same troubles love relationships, etc. As I have written before, his mid-life neurotic angst plays less well with me when it comes from his septegenarian mouth. Is he a genius reflecting the realhuman condition, or is he just really immature having never grown up?
Incidentally, I thought that Hugh Jackman look’s like how my old Canadian church minister, John, would look if he shaved off his beard. John is thinner than Jackman, but the shape of the face is sufficiently similar. I recently watched Jackman in another film, The Prestige, with Christian Bale and Michael Caine.