Celebrity
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Movie Reviews of Celebrity
Movie Review: It gets better every time
Summary: 5 Stars
When I first saw CELEBRITY, I hated it just as much as most of my fellow reviewers. But, I'm a die hard Allen fan, so I saw it again. The film seemed different the second time, the message seemed more defined, but it wasn't like it had changed since the last time. The difference, I knew when it was going to end. The first time it seems to drag on and on . . and on. But the second time round, you are free to listen and absorb everything a lot easier. This is a great movie, with an excelent cast and some hilarious moments.Movie Review: A session with the therapist!
Summary: 5 Stars
How to deal with prize of the fame? You win notoriety, applauses and full acknowledgements but what is going after the lights turn off?.
One of the most inquisitive, challenging and provocative films of this hyper talented filmmaker, that shows with its merciless nudity certain unknown bits backstage.
Brilliant and profoundly worthy to watch it over and over.
Movie Review: One of our Favorite Films
Summary: 5 Stars
Celebrity is one of our favorite films of all time. It's composed of several short stories, often woven together, and hilariously funny, all rolled up into ONE. While certainly not for everyone, this movie is timeless with great acting by the cast, revealing behind-the-scenes similarities of a star's life.
Movie Review: If Branagh can play Hamlet then he can play Woody Allen
Summary: 4 Stars
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.
Movie Review: Crazy for being famous
Summary: 4 Stars
Ah! Fame...a circus where everybody wants a number...Who's not fascinated by it?
Talented director Woody Allen examines this phenomenon in a terrific movie called Celebrity. Kenneth Branagh stars as Lee Simons, a writer who's looking for support for his script and is interviewing famous stars. While he goes deep down the world of movie stars, supermodels and big celebrities, Lee ends up his marriage with Robin, who at first doesn't take well the breakup but soon gets involved with a charismatic man that changes her life an vision about the future.
A sharp comedy that exposes the silly reasons of why people become famous and the even more ridiculous behavior they exhibit, Celebrity is brilliantly acted, flawlessly written and filmed in shiny black and white.
Once again, critics and fans of Allen's work won't be able but to find similarities with his life. Lee is a typical Woody, in a marriage crisis, hyperkinetic, black humored, sex-obsessed, and talking constantly about human relationships and his multiple neurosis.
The representation of what could be his life becomes in Celebrity in hard criticism, even harder than the one showed in Deconstructing Harry. Is the voice of a tormented man, able to question his life trough his art.
The interesting thing about Celebrity is that present us Lee as a confident, arrogant, happy man living the life he always wanted. And who can blame him for that? But gradually, the layers of that happiness fall out until we get a character shaking, naked hearing the cold voices of his personal demons. Celebrity reveals without any subtleties the frailties of our ego.