"Scoop", the latest Woody Allen movie (no spoilers, kind of)

[Rain Man]

I went and saw Scoop last weekend. I won't go into detail about the plot or anything, so as not to spoil it for anyone, but the following words must be said.

The general plot and theme of the movie were good. There were a couple of areas where you have to suspend disbelief and accept a few highly unlikely events as plausible, but the movie had the potential to be good.

Scarlett Johannson (sp?) and Hugh Jackman performed admirably in two of the three lead roles.

However, the actor in the third lead role was horrendous, largely because the character was completely asinine. After nearly every line, I'd find myself sneering and thinking, "That's stupid dialogue. No one would ever say that in that situation." I was praying for this character to die after 15 minutes. That character, of course, was played by Woody Allen and was a ... a ... I don't know what the character was supposed to be.

It was Woody Allen reprising his neurotic Jewish guy role, and in the past it has worked, more or less. (Not my schtick, but it worked.) However, it was so poorly conceived and executed in this movie that I was embarrassed for the guy. His character was 90 degrees out of phase with the movie, spouting one-liners that had nothing to do with the plot, behaving in ways that were stupid and counterintuitive in a way that wasn't at all entertaining, and generally just being an annoyance the whole time to both the other characters and to the audience. If he wasn't the writer, producer, and director, this abomination would've been stopped in Round One and rewritten.

It was really unfortunate, because if the character had merely been written as a normal human being, the movie would've been pretty good.

I think Woody's time has come. He needs to sign a one-day contract with Sleeper and have his jersey hung from the rafters of that movie.

[Ultra Peanut]

Paging Jenson to thread #146115.