![]() Within the elevated circles they find themselves in, he is even more fish-out-of-water than Scarlett, which is used to great comedic effect throughout. Perhaps more importantly, this time the character works in the story. Unlike his Ed Dobel sage character in Anything Else, or his blind director in Hollywood Ending, this time the character is a comfortable fit. However, this time Woody seems to have written a character that truly fits his current persona. Thus, we don't find ourselves ripped out of the narrative as a Woody's voice suddenly emerges from someone else' face.As my friend commented on the way out, Sid, the character played by Woody, is a supporting role, but more center-stage than I was hoping going in. To a great extent, unlike Farrell, Branaugh, Cusack or even Mia Farrow before her, Scarlett is not required to use the Woody voice to evoke the Woody role. But the laughs don't come from recognizing the Woody nebbish, but truly from the character. Since we are all in on the joke, we can't help but laugh. On numerous occasions the "family business" leads her to malapropisms that we get as an audience, while the characters on the screen can only perceive them as strange non-sequiturs. Instead of archetypal ticks and quirks, Sondra's nerdishness comes directly from the family history which she shares early on. As I suspected from the trailer, this film had a lot of Manhattan Murder Mystery in it, but then again, there was more than a smidgen of Oedipus Wrecks New York Stories, Alice, and even a little tribute to Broadway Danny Rose at the very beginning.Even with Woody in the movie, Scarlett, as Sondra, was, at times the Woody-proxy, but her character was far from the Nebbish that, say, Will Ferrell gave us in Melinda and Melinda or Kenneth Branaugh attempted in Celebrity. In many instances, the throw-aways had people laughing so loud you missed the next line.Thematically, Woody was traipsing familiar ground. Admittedly, there were plenty of my fellow AARP card carrying folks in the screening, but there were also plenty of 20-somethings and 30-somethings as well, and they all seemed to get it and give up the occasional belly laugh in addition to numerous guffaws, chuckles and the like. ![]() In to this movie, I was afraid Woody was becoming tone deaf, however, in this one his comic sensibilities were in perfect tune. ![]()
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