Not a title to mobilize the masses, although the proper name would seem to be widely and warmly regarded as audience-friendly: When Harry Met Sally, Dirty Harry, The Trouble with Harry, Harry and Tonto, Harry and Son, Harry and the Hendersons, etc., etc. One of Woody Allen's better efforts in his later years, it fully carries out the dual personality of its title: rich and complex, while still light and easy to digest. The explicit subject, instead of just implicit as before, is autobiographical fiction, and the viewer is invited in turn to deconstruct Woody (or as you prefer, to speculate and gossip about Woody). If Allen, as per the standard disclaimer, had wanted to emphasize imagination over self-revelation, if he had wanted to discourage gossip and speculation, he would have been better advised not to make a movie about a New York writer who looks and talks like (and is played by) Woody Allen, and who writes whimsical New Yorker-ish stories riddled with Allen's pet obsessions, sex, death, God, Jews. The plan of illustrating these stories on screen with other actors as stand-ins for their author (Richard Benjamin, Stanley Tucci, Robin Williams) provides variety as well as ambiguity, muddying the clear autobiographical waters. It also produces a grab-bag quality, a choppy, uneven movie cobbled together with left-over scraps and shavings from the Wood-shop. Judy Davis, Elisabeth Shue, Demi Moore, Kirstie Alley, Julia Louis-Dreyfus. (1997) — Duncan Shepherd
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