Celebrity
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Movie Reviews of Celebrity
Movie Review: This movie had me laughing!
Summary: 4 Stars
I am surprised that most people did not like this film. One person even described it as the "worst movie ever"?!? I would definitely have to disagree. "Celebrity" reminds me of one of my favorite movies, "The Big Lebowski" by the Coen Brothers. Like that film, the story revolves around the lives of these pathetic characters. You can't help but feel sorry for them, but laugh at the same time. In fact, this is one of my favorite Woody Allen films. A lot of people think this is unlike a typical Woody Allen film. Perhaps I don't like his traditional work as much. I also enjoyed Allen's "Anything Else", but many fans did not. It appears most people either like his early work or his later work.Movie Review: DiCaprio is the best thing in film
Summary: 4 Stars
The film is beautifully shot in black and white. Many critics faulted Branagh's performance but the truth is if Woody Allen had played his role, it would not have been believable - Winona Ryder, Charlize Theron - all falling for Woody? Anyway, the main spark in the film comes from the 15 minutes of Leonardo DiCaprio as a drugged out movie star playing with Branagh's head - the energy DiCaprio exerts only goes to show, by comparison, how uninteresting most of the other characters in the film are - you wonder how good a film this really could have been if DiCaprio's part was more like 60 min rather than 15.Movie Review: Full of throwaway lines
Summary: 4 Stars
I assume that Kenneth Branagh imitates Woody Allen here because Allen himself is now too old to keep playing the woman-chasing schlub who ends up with women way too attractive for him. Maybe this isn't classic Woody, but it's pretty good stuff.Movie Review: Fame -- It's the name of the game
Summary: 3 Stars
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?
Movie Review: Minor Woody Allen
Summary: 3 Stars
Woody Allen has been directing movies for well over thirty years. He has also been in psychoanalysis for perhaps as long, and for several years, I have suspected that the quality of his movies depends on where his angst and his neuroses are at at the time. His films are often autobiographical in nature. We have seen the same themes evolve over the years. This is often fascinating, because we see his views of these subjects change as he grows older.Celebrity is not a major work by Allen. It is if he is in some emotional crossroads and can not pick a suitable path for the story, which makes the movie choppy. Some scenes have flashes of brilliance, while others work for Allen, but not for the audience. The acting is much less subtle than usual, which may be because the celebrity world it is set in is not known for subtlety.
Lee Simon [Kenneth Branagh] is a journalist who longs for a better life. He has had a couple of novels published. Critics trashed them both, and now Joe is convinced that the screenplay he is working on is the answer. He decides to dump his wife, Judy [Judy Davis] so that he can pursue his dreams. She falls apart, but, in a classic Allen theme, she regroups and becomes a better, happier person, while Lee continues to flounder.
Within the rather slim plot, there are vignettes about various kinds of celebrities, and these are the parts of the movie that often work best. Charlize Theron portrays a supermodel who is the walking definition of shallow. Melanie Griffin is a demented star. Leonardo Di Caprio gives a startling performance as Brandon, a self-centered brat who is America's heartthrob of the moment.
As in almost every Allen opus, the main character falls for much younger women. A new twist here is Lee's adventures with Brandon. He is no match for the recklessness, wildness and stamina of a much younger man. True to the older man / younger woman theme, Lee learnes nothing from this encounter.
People who are not familiar with the director's work will probably be turned off by Celebrity, if only because it is black and white. Those who do not like Allen will find their distaste reaffirmed. Allen fans will be diverted, but will hope that his next project will prove more on target. There is a good chance that it will be, as the director has always been hit and miss. What do you expect from an admitted neurotic?
My list of the best Woody Allen movies is as follows [in descending order]: Hannah and Her Sisters, Annie Hall, Manhattan, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Love and Death, Husbands and Wives, Zelig, Bullets Over Broadway, Manhattan Murder Mystery.