Writer-director Woody Allen here makes only token appearances on screen, as himself, in talking-head interview segments, together with jazz writer Nat Hentoff and others, to lend a documentary touch to the made-up story of Emmet Ray, a "little-known" American jazz guitarist of the Thirties ("I was a huge fan of his when I was younger," Allen deadpans to the camera), second in ability to the inimitable European gypsy, Django Reinhardt, with whom he shares a propensity to show up late or not at all for a performance. Ray's torment at being only second best is one of a number of running gags in the film, running alongside the guitarist's tendency to, so to speak, blow his own horn ("I'm an artist"), and his bonehead notions of a good time: shooting rats at the city dump or sitting by the tracks and watching trains go by. Indeed, the film seems founded on the principle that repetition will sooner or later produce humor. In this instance it produces only a little, and mostly later. The end result is one of Allen's more innocuous and inconsequential concoctions, albeit prettily photographed by Zhao Fei (Raise the Red Lantern). Sean Penn, besides adding a noteworthy topiary hairdo to his vast gamut of do's, obviously studied hard to learn the credible fingering for the musical numbers: an "A" for the fingering; a "C-plus" for the overgrown Dead End Kid speaking voice. Samantha Morton and Uma Thurman are the dissimilar women at different stages of his life, an adoring simple-minded mute (you'd never know she's British in reality) and a slumming kicks-craving would-be Boswell, respectively. The emotional climax -- when (and why) the jazzman smashes his instrument -- is so subtle and unprepared-for, it might almost escape comprehension. Had it been better prepared-for, on the other hand, it would not have been so subtle. As is, it is mildly surprising without being remotely affecting. (1999) — Duncan Shepherd
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