REVIEW: Vicky Christina Barcelona

By: Patrick McKeown l Contributor

Posted: 9/24/08

Woody Allen's name, year after year, comes up as one of those who is constantly ridiculed for his less than admirable actions and loved for his films whose comedy broke through new ceilings that have yet to be touched.

But enough lame metaphors. Allen's last few films have left me startled out of sadness that I actually had to pay to see them. I hold Allen at a very high standard based on his first films, which I find to be nearly perfect.

His more recent films are nothing but studies in human relationships trying desperately to break away from the common romantic comedy. He is known as one of the creators of the romantic comedy, but his delivery has changed from paranoia to distant onlooker looking to get paid. The hopelessness of love is still there, but instead of laughing I found myself scratching my eyes out.

What I found most annoying about this film, Vicky Christina Barcelona, was the voice-over narration. In a few of his other films, notably Sweet and Lowdown, Allen uses this technique to magnify his themes through his paranoid Brooklyn drawl. When it is in this delivery I find it to be quite enjoyable.

Allen's face and voice were completely absent from the film and instead were replaced by Christopher Evan Welch whose voice evoked images of the captain of the Harvard rowing team explaining the mundane actions in the lifestyle of the upwardly mobile. I hope this was a parody. He has spent many a film satirizing those denizens of the Upper East side and their detestable inner core. I can only hope he is channeling this energy instead of something more sinister.

I know that the men in the audience will be wondering about Scarlett Johannson, so I'll start there. She speaks in a put-on smokers accent evoking Fran Drescher which is not very becoming. Furthermore, she plays a static character who is hopelessly searching for love. She serves as the conduit between the two major story lines, and nothing more. Johannson could be replaced by any actress. Fine, maybe not Fran Drescher, but that's about it.

The two story lines which she connects deal with an artist (Javier Bardem) and his genius, murderous and all around crazy ex-wife (Penelope Cruz). While in Barcelona, Johannson's friend (Rebecca Hall) falls briefly in love with Bardem while being nearly married to her upper-echelon fiancé. Johannson, Cruz and Bardem are then enveloped in a relationship in which Johannson plays the cog which keeps Cruz and Bardem back together.

Like Johannson, the story line of Bardem and Cruz is entirely disposable. It is the classic artist and crazy lady love each other but can't stay together because they're just too creative for each other. You know the one, the one that never works.

Where the movie works best is with Hall and her fiancé. He is obsessed with the notion of upward mobility and along the way we learn more and more about their friends whose interests include bird-watching and specialized TV repairmen. Hall carries her own by putting herself in very uncomfortable positions in which she has to climb out of her own grave to satisfy her own self-image. Her self-image becomes shattered when she realizes that her studies in Catalan art are leading solely to a dead end, leaving her to leech off of her husband's money. But then the unthinkable happens (spoiler withheld).

A final anecdote: classic Allen fans&mdash:beware. People who liked the structure of Match Point and the pointlessness of Dynasty&mdash:enjoy.