Annie Hall (1977)

Starring: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, Carol Kane, Paul Simon, Shelley Duvall

First, the Lowdown: A comedian breaks up with his girlfriend and tries to figure out how the relationship failed.

My fellow fans and reprobates, I’m going to break from my usual reviewing style here by forgoing any attempt at synopsizing this film and instead cut straight to the critique of it. “Why?” might you ask? Because it’s a film that kinda defies any attempt to sum it up – I could tell you moments of the film, or specific lines (“Twins, Max. 16 years-old. Can you imagine the mathematical possibities?”), but really Annie Hall is a movie that you are either going to get or not, much like most of Woody Allen’s work. And even still the only way you know if you’re going to get it or not is by watching it.

As usual, Annie Hall comes off as semi-autobiographical, or at the very least, self-analytical. Having only watched a handful of Woody Allen previously, I can say that while Annie Hall is chocked full of Woody’s usual directorial indulgences (Marshall McLuhan comes in from off-screen and dresses down a pseudo-intellectual), here they are used to good effect instead of coming off as Woody Allen saying “Why did I film it that way? Because I can, you moron.”

Directorial whimsy aside, Allen manages to engage his audience through storytelling (something most American movie studios have forgotten about.) What makes Annie Hall so cool is that it presents its viewers with a situation nearly everyone of us has been in – that moment of retrospection after a breakup that vacillates between self-flagellation and righteous indignation. Both Annie and Alvy are perfectly flawed and perfectly realistic.

One thing of note – Annie Hall is one of those cinema classics that everyone has to have seen because all these other movies borrow from it. And to be honest, I have to agree here: nearly every romantic comedy I’ve seen from about 1987 onward has either blatantly ripped off or paid homage to Annie Hall in some small way or another - especially if that movie has wall-breaking on-screen narration.

Annie Hall is most definitely a product of the 1970’s, however. And I’m not even referring to the fashion either, just look at the mainstream acceptance of psychotherapy, drug use, intellectualism, sex, and the female orgasm (“With your wife in bed, does she need some kind of artificial stimulation, like marijuana?” “We use a large vibrating egg.”) One of my favorite scenes has our couple in Los Angeles at the grand estate of a music producer, and all of the guests are wearing their individualistic quirks like fashion accessories. (Jeff Goldblum’s walk-on cameo sums it up best: “I forgot my mantra.”

Line of the movie: “I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.”

Four and a half stars. Give me cookie!