Wispy-thin Woody Allen comedy: classy and perfectly enjoyable on a minor scale, though somehow seeming more an innocuous jaunt rather than a highlight of Allen's cinematic oeuvre. A group of comics in a New York City deli reminisce about a past acquaintance, a theatrical manager whose clientèle consists mainly of outcasts and has-beens. Allen plays Danny Rose somewhat differently than he does the struggling Lotharios of "Annie Hall" and "Manhattan"; he turns the tables on himself, begging booking agents to hire his curio acts, and acting like a mother hen to his single star attraction, a hefty Italian singer who once had a hit in the 1950s. As a writer, Allen gets the Italian-Mafia scenario down perfectly, while his bits of visual satire are as cutting as they were in "Stardust Memories" (though without the sour aftertaste, this film being far more inoffensive). Cinematographer Gordon Willis gives the picture a sharp, stylized look, and his use of white light contrasted with deep shadows is probably unsurpassed, however "Danny Rose" seems too little a project for such a heady visual presentation--it leads viewers to hope for something more. There are laughs all the way through, and yet the movie never really takes off, hovering somewhere between zany and nostalgic. It stays pleasantly grounded, an affable time-filler. **1/2 from ****
Review of Broadway Danny Rose
