Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19634 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-06-07
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Dolby, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Running time: 108 minutes

From Amazon.com
Christina Ricci invigorates an even-more-neurotic-than-usual variation on the classic neurotic woman in this Woody Allen movie. Comedy writer Jerry Falk (Jason Biggs, American Pie) is madly in love with Amanda (Ricci, The Opposite of Sex), even though they haven't had sex in six months. Falk meets an older writer named Dobel (Allen) who becomes a sort of accidental mentor, encouraging him to break free of Amanda and his clinging agent (Danny DeVito). The pace is sluggish, almost every scene feels like an outtake from an earlier, better Woody Allen movie (particularly Annie Hall), Biggs never seems comfortable with his dialogue--only Ricci makes her character her own, giving her own perverse comic spin to the proceedings. About three-fourths of the way through the movie, the story starts to feel fresher and more compelling, but by then it's too late. Also featuring Jimmy Fallon and Stockard Channing. --Bret Fetzer

Review
Woody Allen's Anything Else is a decent effort, especially when comparing it to Allen films from the same period. The lifeless Hollywood Ending and The Curse of the Jade Scorpion showed a filmmaker whose muse may have left once and for all, but Anything Else corrals some of Allen's most familiar themes and allows him to show some life. Jason Biggs is well cast as Jerry Falk. He comes off like an everyman, offering the perfect counterpoint to the crazies that orbit his world. Even though he has been given dialogue that often rings of old-school Allen, Biggs generally avoids imitating Allen's familiar vocal tics. Christina Ricci is a familiar Allen female -- a sexually voracious, emotionally troubled, attractive woman who brings out the worst in the men who become entangled with her. Ricci, however, is so appealing, and is photographed so adoringly, that she makes the character as sympathetic as possible. Even Allen the filmmaker seems to have been won over by her. Allen the actor takes on a role that is simultaneously familiar, while still being unlike any he has played before. David Dobell is not a cute neurotic, he's a violent paranoid psychotic. This lends an edge to the stereotypical "the world is aligned against me" schtick Allen has mastered, which it had been lacking for a while. Any Allen fan will recognize the recycling of elements from Annie Hall, Broadway Danny Rose, and Manhattan. If the old saying that artists steal rather than borrow is true, at least Woody is pilfering from some of his best work. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

Synopsis
A young artist struggling with his career and his muse is getting more than a little aggravation from Cupid in this romantic comedy written and directed by Woody Allen. Jerry Falk (Jason Biggs) is a promising 21-year-old comedy writer living in New York City. While Jerry has talent, he's having a hard time getting his career off the ground, which might have something to do with the fact his agent Harvey (Danny DeVito) is a well-meaning, but ineffectual, blowhard, and his mentor David Dobel (Allen) is an increasingly paranoid eccentric whose twin careers as a teacher and standup comic are both floundering. Poised at the top of Jerry's mountain of anxieties is his relationship with his girlfriend Amanda (Christina Ricci); from the first moment he saw her, Jerry has been in love with her, but Amanda's multiple neuroses, fear of commitment, and frustrating intimacy issues make her all but impossible to be around. Jerry is approaching his breaking point when the small flat he shares with Amanda becomes home to a third roommate -- Amanda's mother Paula (Stockard Channing), who has decided to come to New York to chase her dream of becoming a cabaret singer. Anything Else also features supporting performances from Jimmy Fallon, William Hill, and jazz vocalist Diana Krall. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Customer Reviews

Not as good
Anything else id not as good as Allen's other. The neurotic character is more in Biggs character, than in Allen's. Biggs is like a young Allen, and it's not that great. Besides that the movie is pretty funny, not rolling on the floor funny, but funny.

Insert audible sigh here
Let's be honest and upfront about this. I love Woody Allen movies and always have, right up through his last truly great film, Bullets Over Broadway. Since then, it's been scattershot. Mighty Aphrodite and Everyone Says I Love You were okay. Hollywood Ending wasn't that bad. Deconstructing Harry was an interesting change of pace. Other than that, I can't say that I've enjoyed any of his more recent films. Celebrity, Small Time Crooks, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion - nearly unwatchable. It almost seems like he's phoning it in.

So turning to Anything Else, it appears that he might have learned some lessons from his previous efforts by removing himself as the romantic lead. Thankfully - who wants to see Woody wooing Christina Ricci? And also thankfully, he gave himself a part that is actually the best one in the film. His wisecracking Dobel generates most of the genuine laugh moments in the plot alongside an under-used Danny DeVito. Unfortunately, since Woody is not playing the main "Woody" character, it's left to Jason Biggs to more or less assume the persona which gave me some qualms, especially remembering Kenneth Branagh's Woody impersonation in Celebrity. Surprisingly, Biggs pulls it off without lapsing into caricature but it's hard to digest that a twenty-something man would just happen to possess all of the neuroses and cultural tastes of Woody Allen as we have come to know him.

The same goes for Christina Ricci. She doesn't do anything horrible in the film but her character becomes very tiresome very quickly and while it enhances the comedy elements surrounding Biggs's character, it's probably not the best idea for a romantic comedy to make one half of the loving pair so annoying.

Stockard Channing is also a wonderful actress with an interesting character who doesn't get enough screen time. I know that a lot of actors make sacrifices just for the sake of being in a Woody Allen movie, but some deserve more when they achieve something. I mentioned Danny DeVito earlier - his scene in the restaurant and Stockard Channing's when she plays the piano are gems.

Fortunately for the film, Jason Biggs can do subtle comedy and his character generates a lot of empathy. Hopefully Woody has found a new niche for himself in his films as a major supporting character. Dobel allows Woody to lapse back into some of his early career schtick without crossing the line that made most of us cringe at some of his more recent work. Just in looking at the advertising and PR for this film, one would never know that it was a Woody Allen movie and it's a shame that it's come to the point where his name might be construed as a negative.

Woody: The Exterminating Angel
Woody Allen's films have been gifts, balms, salves in my life -
when every other thing that happens around me seems to be
a knock on Camus' door of unhappiness. His films may appear
to be more and more flawed - but not to me.

Robert Motherwell said, " All of my life I've been working the work...Each picture is only an approximation of what you want...you can never
make the absolute statement, but the desire to do so as an approximation keeps you going. " Think about Woody Allen's

career as a film maker - and perhaps this movie will not stand
out, but there are qualities in it that do.

Imagine a retrospective of the best moments of Woody's films, like
the coda-retrospectives in some of them ( Annie Hall ) - it would
be an amazing collage of scenes and lines that we remember
and quote and are reminded of every day.

It is hard to like Anything Else. Christina Ricci's character, no matter how well-played, no matter how agreeable she is to look at, is unbearable.
I rented the movie, and had to turn it off now and then, because I
couldn't understand why Jason Biggs didn't hand her her hat or
strangle her.

Were it not for Woody's character, I may have cancelled the movie.
Dobel ( Allen ) is so nimble-minded, clever in scathing thought
( I'll quote his comment about vomiting in Carnegie Hall to my
college art students ) that I would have been satisfied by the scenes
of Jason and Woody alone.

They both stammer. Woody, like Jimmy Stewart, has made stammering
an art. If you have a problem with one actor stammering, get ready.
Jerry Falk ( Biggs ) can't get through a thought without an eraser.

The music is perfect.

The sly references will please those who grasp
them, and alienate those who don't. Some are just slivers: a couple
exit a movie house and we hear the man say something about why didn't the dinner guests just get up and leave? Woody is honoring
Luis Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel, and sending a little

Valentine to those in the audience who know it.

There are no special effects, eviscerations, frontal nudity, car
chases --- just people talking with people about what ( some )
people talk about. These are my favorites movies. Anything Else
won't get high mention in Woody's obituary - but I dare you not
to be amused every time Jason appears in his therapist's office - or
not to add Dobel to the list of nuanced visionaries and nutcakes
that Woody has created and given to us.