After "Annie Hall" Allen began getting serious, alternating dramas with comedies of varying quality. This one is a success, as was "Hollywood Ending." Not that you should look for anything resembling Allen's earlier anarchic comedies. His later attempts were more rooted in reality, so to speak. The premise was off, and the jokes followed from that, as they almost might in actual life.
Here the premise is that he's mistaken by Italian mobsters for the womanizer who is breaking the heart of a Mafia family. Hit men pursue him and the young lady in question, an almost unrecognizable Mia Farrow, to a diner in New Jersey, thence to Manhattan. Allen and Farrow wind up being shot at in the warehouse that contains the floats for the upcoming Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. It also houses a couple of tanks of helium that are punctured by bullets, leading to a furious conversational exchange between the killers and the two intended victims, except that the shouts come out of helium-filled lungs and sound like Donald Duck's voice. (Who thinks of something like that?) That's about as outrageous as the comedy gets. It's the point of the plot at which the greatest distance from everyday life is achieved. The rest of the gags center around Allen's character. Allen has it in him, and he recognizes this, to play two kinds of characters -- the failed intellectual neurotic and the frazzled street-level hustling neurotic. Here he's the latter, a theatrical manager whose life is one long panic attack and whose conversation consists of stock show-biz phrases -- "God bless ya, darling," and, "May I interject just one concept at this point?" The acts he manages are on the level of one-legged tap dancers, birds who peck out tunes on the piano, virtuosos who play "Daisy" on the water glasses, and Nick Apollo Forte as a has-been Italian pop singer.
Forte's character is one of the least interesting. Among the more interesting, Allen's character aside, are the Italian family he and Farrow visit in New Jersey, especially the son who writes egregious poetry and is in love with Farrow after having had a fling with her. And the poet's mother -- wailing operatically that her son has drunk iodine, her eyes rolling, shouting curses and invoking the evil eye. One wonders if Allen hadn't recently seen a couple of movies by Scorsese and Coppola and decided to do a number on the milieu.
It's pretty funny. I could swear that one scene is set in the Tick-Tock Diner but North Jersey has so many many diners that it's easy to confuse them.
Here the premise is that he's mistaken by Italian mobsters for the womanizer who is breaking the heart of a Mafia family. Hit men pursue him and the young lady in question, an almost unrecognizable Mia Farrow, to a diner in New Jersey, thence to Manhattan. Allen and Farrow wind up being shot at in the warehouse that contains the floats for the upcoming Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. It also houses a couple of tanks of helium that are punctured by bullets, leading to a furious conversational exchange between the killers and the two intended victims, except that the shouts come out of helium-filled lungs and sound like Donald Duck's voice. (Who thinks of something like that?) That's about as outrageous as the comedy gets. It's the point of the plot at which the greatest distance from everyday life is achieved. The rest of the gags center around Allen's character. Allen has it in him, and he recognizes this, to play two kinds of characters -- the failed intellectual neurotic and the frazzled street-level hustling neurotic. Here he's the latter, a theatrical manager whose life is one long panic attack and whose conversation consists of stock show-biz phrases -- "God bless ya, darling," and, "May I interject just one concept at this point?" The acts he manages are on the level of one-legged tap dancers, birds who peck out tunes on the piano, virtuosos who play "Daisy" on the water glasses, and Nick Apollo Forte as a has-been Italian pop singer.
Forte's character is one of the least interesting. Among the more interesting, Allen's character aside, are the Italian family he and Farrow visit in New Jersey, especially the son who writes egregious poetry and is in love with Farrow after having had a fling with her. And the poet's mother -- wailing operatically that her son has drunk iodine, her eyes rolling, shouting curses and invoking the evil eye. One wonders if Allen hadn't recently seen a couple of movies by Scorsese and Coppola and decided to do a number on the milieu.
It's pretty funny. I could swear that one scene is set in the Tick-Tock Diner but North Jersey has so many many diners that it's easy to confuse them.