[.ca] Celebrity (Widescreen)

From Amazon.com:
Woody Allen's portrait of the celebrity life--as seen through the eyes of a newly divorced couple--is a black-and-white, New York-style La Dolce Vita that's a chillier flip side to Allen's earlier New York valentine, Manhattan. Despite a few missteps, though, it's an admirable (if dark) and worthy addition to the Allen pantheon. Kenneth Branagh and Judy Davis (both boasting American accents) star as the once-marrieds, each struggling to build new, separate lives in a media-saturated, celebrity-driven world. He tries his hands at celebrity profiles (while peddling a screenplay to any star that will listen) and falls into the lap of a bosomy starlet (Melanie Griffith), the first in a long line of briefly attainable women. She runs into a producer (Joe Mantegna) who offers her a job as a TV personality as well as a loving relationship. This seemingly simple double plot is punctuated with twists and turns in the form of flashbacks and innumerable side trips, all ravishingly photographed in black and white by the legendary Sven Nykvist, and populated by one of Allen's largest casts ever; if you blink you'll miss countless cameos by Isaac Mizrahi, Donald Trump, Hank Azaria, and a host of others. While Davis is splendid as usual (aside from the requisite nervous breakdown scene she's done one too many times), somebody should have told Branagh to put a kibosh on his Woody Allen imitation, which is so impeccable as to become irritating. His failure in the role, however, isn't entirely his fault, as it's also another in a long line of unlikable male protagonists that Allen has created, as if daring audiences to hate his main characters after loving them in such movies as Manhattan and Annie Hall. He's never more unlikable than in a painful sequence in which he tags along with a spoiled, temperamental teen idol (a shrewd and clever Leonardo DiCaprio) and proves himself the quintessential noodge. Far more enjoyable misadventures with Branagh include Charlize Theron in the film's best performance as a libidinous supermodel with a penchant for echinacea; a stunning Famke Janssen as a successful book editor Branagh almost moves in with; and Winona Ryder, acting like an adult for the first time, as an aspiring actress who catches Branagh's eye more than once. All manage to slip through Branagh's fingers by the end of the film. Despite the film's lack of focus, Allen aficionados will want this film for at least two wonderful moments, one in which Davis seeks solace from a streetwise fortune teller after she's fleeing her own wedding, and a beautiful nighttime scene in which Branagh romances a captivated Ryder at a subway kiosk. Both episodes prove that Allen, despite the fitful period he's moved into, still has that movie magic. --Mark Englehart

Perhaps the worst film ever made.:
It is apparently impossible to give a film 0 stars, so I have had to give it one. A Godawful mess bereft of wit, rhythm, or interest. Kenneth Branagh is alternately irritating and embarrassing as he does his Woody impression for two hours. The only good in this film is Leonardo DiCaprio's 15 minutes, during which he blows the stagey, theatrical, northeastern smarty-pants segment of the cast out of the water. Seriously, if you enjoy this film on any level, there is something wrong with you. And I like Woody Allen.

If Branagh can play Hamlet then he can play Woody Allen:
Despite the title and the parade of characters who can be labeled as such, Woody Allen's 1998 film "Celebrity" is, like most of his films, about the peculiar ability of a man to destroy the important interpersonal relationships in his life. What makes "Celebrity" different is that this time around the Woody Allen part is not played by Allen, but by Kenneth Branagh. The actor, who has been nominated for an Oscar for playing Shakespeare on the silver screen, decides to play the Woody Allen character in "Celebrity" just like Woody Allen. Really. The dialogue is all written in Allen's distinctive voice, but instead of it being said by a small, wiry, balding Jewish comedian it is being said by a large, robust, wavy-haired Irish actor with the EXACT same cadences and inflections. Chances are that by the end of this film you still will not believe your ears on this one. Now back to the film. This time around the self-destructive main character is named Lee Simon (Branagh), a journalist and would be writer of a novel or screenplay if he can just get it done. Having cast aside his wife Robin (Judy Davis), Simon goes looking for love with most of the women who cross his path, from a movie star (Melanie Griffith) and a supermodel (a sizzling Charlize Theron) to an actress who plays bit parts (Wynona Ryder). Like Allen's script for this film, Lee's life is going around in circles. He cannot articulate to Robin the reason why he is leaving her any more than he can fully explain any of his actions as he moves from one woman to the next. As we are told at both the beginning and the end of the film, Lee Simon is a man who needs help. The punch line to the cosmic joke is that after Lee's departure plunges her into the depths of despair, Robin's life moves onward and upward because realizing there are gaps in her life she tries to fill them and improve herself, even if it means turning to the experience Nina (Bebe Neuwrith) for some interesting life lessons. By the end of the film she Robin is on top of her game and Lee is back where he started, and we realize this is something we have seen from Allen before and seen done better as well. So, why did Allen simply not play himself? Because Woody Allen looks like Woody Allen. Today he looks more like an older Woody Allen (see "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion"). To put it bluntly, no supermodel is going to be interested in him. Thus we have the transposition of the Allen persona into the body of Branagh, who brings a manliness to the comic's neurotic mannerisms. When Branagh drives an antique Austin-Martin as a way of helping him pick up chicks, it sends a different signal than if it were Allen behind the wheel of that same car (besides, we know from "Annie Hall" that Woody can't drive). The choice of Branagh and his decision to play the part this way has a significance that extends beyond the idea that it is just some sort of a joke. There are two many sex scenes in this film for Allen to carried them off seriously. More importantly, if the nebbish that Allen has created over four decades of film can look like Branagh, then that is certainly something for us to think about.

Fame -- It's the name of the game:
Andy Warhol once intoned that we'd all be famous for 15 minutes. In Woody Allen's 1998 comedy "Celebrity," one of his characters cites that quotable quote. The unquenchable thirst for being applauded and lauded permeates this film. All of the denizens of this black-and-white NYC world gravitate toward photographers' flashbulbs, gossip column newsprint, and sound bites on entertainment TV. His cast of actresses, models, painters, writers, and producers are all jockeying to be recognizable to the public, as opposed to being recognized in their fields. It doesn't matter whether they create works of art or produce oeuvres that will be their permanent legacies--they all simply want a chance to appear on Page Six or be dished by Joan Rivers on the red carpet. (Allen shows this brilliantly during a second-rate movie premiere sequence, where Karen Duffy interviews arriving celebrities in a high-pitched, frenzied, continually growing fervor. Her hard-hitting questions of these minor celebs include insights into the weather, the rain, and the puddles. Additionally, Debra Messing makes a brief pre "Will and Grace" appearance as a bellowing banshee TV reporter. Her broadcasting is of a feverish, shouting, ear-splitting level.) Allen, who at one time had been hailed as a comic genius, began to make serious, European-inspired films in the early 1980s. He is at his best, however, when he makes "warmedys" or "dramedys," movies that walk the tightrope of laughing out loud and meditatively exploring affairs of the heart and mind. In Allen's personal life, which always included the requisite relationship with leading ladies (Louise Lasser, Diane Keaton, Mia Farrow), he seemed to be following what is mandated of directorial types. His reputation took a violent turn downward with his secret wooing and seducing of Soon-Yi, Farrow's adopted daughter. With his callow explanation of "The heart wants what the heart wants," Allen had unwittingly joined a pantheon of fellow May-December offenders: Roman Polanski, Charlie Chaplin, Errol Flynn. It doesn't matter whether Soon-Yi was of legal age when the romance began, Allen was branded as a child grabber. This fall from grace and the unwilling attainment of fame on a whole different level is the driving force of "Celebrity." Throughout the film, shallow models, spoiled actresses, high-strung editors, generous producers, and confused writers interact before backdrops of "The Ricki Lake Show" or "Jerry Springer." Look carefully and you'll see Joey and Mary Jo Buttafuco playing on a televison screen, and you'll catch Donald "the Donald" Trump extolling how he plans on buying up St. Patrick's Cathedral to raze it and build some dynamite condo space. We live in a world where people become PEOPLE magazine cover stories by virtue of being kidnapped, taken hostage, or victimized in some grotesque way. We lionize interns who have achieved notoriety because of their oral skills, rather than their clerical talents. (Just the other day, a 60-plus-year-old woman has come out of the woodwork confessing to being the first First Intern, having taken advantage of executive privilege with JFK.) Allen's movie delves into the whole culture of making a name for oneself without being able to name what one actually does. Kenneth Branagh, doing a dead-on Woody Allen impression, is a travel writer who has a midlife crisis that dictates he wants, and deserves, more than an occasional byline and tryst in bed with his long-suffering Catholic wife. Judy Davis is the aforementioned spouse, and she does a serviceable job as a woman who is convinced that she doesn't deserve happiness and any morsel of good fortune. Along the way, the two characters separate and divorce, then become involved with lunatics and lovers played by Charlize Theron, Famke Janssen, Winona Ryder, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Joe Mantegna. Interestingly, Theron (as a self-absorbed, selfish woman who basically has become famous for wearing lingerie on a runway) utters a prior Allen line: She admits to being polymorphously perverse, being able to attain pleasure wherever she's touched. Allen uses that same adjective to describe the Keaton character in "Annie Hall." (And he uses its reverse, "polymorphously insensitive," to razz the Dianne Wiest character in "Hannah.") Overall, "Celebrity" is not a fabulous movie. It's not consistently funny and it doesn't have the touching moments or sweetness of "Hannah and Her Sisters." This is a text-book movie to view, though, if you want to see how one of the most famous men in American cinema history pontificates about fame and the price one pays to attain it. It will also prompt you to consider whether mass adoration morally bankrupts the seeker, or is one already lacking in good character when the hungry hunt begins?

Every master has a low point:
I consider myself a Woody Allen fan. I love his movies, his essays, his plays, and his stand-up routine. So it pains me to say that Celebrity is the first, and so far the only, movie by Allen that I had to shut off before it was over. It was so tedious, that I turned it off twice! I don't know where to begin. This story, if you can call it that, was a messy hodge-podge. Sure, all actors considered are very talented, but their characters were not at all engaging and their respective plots were big empty holes. Celebtity presents itself as a case study of celebrity life: the kind of life a celebrity leads and how a culture regards that celebrated personality. But the movie never does it. All it does it hop from one soap opera lilly pad to another with little unification. The only part of the movie that upholds that promise is when Branaugh, a jabbering brainiac trying to get his screenplay off the ground, follows DiCaprio around Vegas, an arrogant teen movie star with a bad temper, trying to get him to look at his movie script. Only then does the word celebrity come to mind successfully. But this interaction is cut short as Branaugh flies back to NYC to do something, I don't even remember what. Another part of the movie that made me grin was when Branaugh's soon to be live-in girlfriend realizes that he wants another woman. She takes the only copy of his manuscript, some book he was writing, and threw it out into the bay. That was priceless. The rest though, is disposable. It's really hard to believe that this script came from the same guy who gave us Manhattan.

DEJA VU FEELING...BUT A VERY BORING DEJA VU.:
"Celebrity" features most of Woody Allen's trademarks: a huge number of characters, a lot of cameos, a lot of mini-stories that are connected between each other, and dialogues filled of whining, sexual allusions, irony and social satire. When the movie is well made, like "Hannah And Her Sisters", "Annie Hall" or "Manhattan", those Woody Allen's trademarks translate into a very good movie, with lots of fun and entertainment. But when is made like "Celebrity" the final result is a failure of a movie. THE BEST: Without a doubt, Charlize Theron, Winona Ryder, Famke Janssen and Melanie Griffith are the best of the movie, all of them are beautiful women and make their scenes in "Celebrity" more interesting than they would have been without those gorgeous actresses. Some of the dialogues in the Leonardo DiCaprio segments are funny and original. There are a lot of interesting cameos. The black & white photography gives personality to the film, in an era packed of explosions and computer generated special effects, is always interesting to see a black & white movie. THE WORST: Without a doubt, the worst in the movie is the Kenneth Branagh character, he is a great actor, but in this movie he makes an increasingly irritating Woody Allen imitation. When the real Woody Allen is the central character, his voice, attitude and physic translate into a funny character, but when someone else does a cheap imitation, the central character becomes pathetic. A lot of the scenes and situations are very, very boring and pointless. "Celebrity" is one of the less interesting movies of Woody Allen, it just feels too familiar, repetitive and boring.