Woody Allen’s latest leaves a bitter aftertaste
Director Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris, Annie Hall, Bullets Over Broadway and many more) has reached a point in his long career where it’s hard for him to avoid repeating himself, and in Café Society he doesn’t even try. His latest is a retread of the themes and character types that Allen has explored many times before, leaving the viewer with a definite sense of déjà vu.
Initially, Café Society is an engaging tale of Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network), a nice Jewish boy who tires of life in the Bronx during the Great Depression and moves out west. Using family connections, Bobby goes to work for his Uncle Phil (Steve Carrell, The 40-Year-Old Virgin), a highly successful Hollywood agent who represents the biggest movie stars. But Phil can’t tear himself away from his deal making to mentor or even entertain Bobby, so he fobs off his nephew on his secretary, Vonnie (Kristen Stewart, The Twilight Saga). She shows the newbie around, and of course, Bobby falls for her even as she tells him about her boyfriend. Meanwhile, Uncle Phil confides to Bobby that he’s falling in love with a younger woman as he vacillates over whether to leave his wife. Sound familiar?
Seeing 1930s Hollywood from a naïve young man’s point of view has promise, since it’s a tale told much less frequently than the female version of the story, and there’s a sweetness in Bobby that makes us care about him—at first. But director Allen isn’t interested in real emotion in this movie, preferring the shiny surfaces the movie’s title calls to mind. (“Café society” is the term used to describe the flamboyant nightlife of the Great Depression which, despite its glamour, had an undercurrent of illegality and desperation.) So Bobby’s sweetness evaporates with his innocence, and he moves back to New York to find success managing a glitzy new nightclub owned by his gangster brother Ben (Corey Stoll, Midnight in Paris).
Audiences have seen other versions of most of the Café Society characters in the movies that Allen has been making for almost 50 years (from Take the Money and Run to Magic in the Moonlight). This time, however, the “ick” factor predominates, from beautiful young women with much older men to Bobby’s brother who repeatedly rubs out people, seemingly with impunity. And while the stereotype Jewish characters in many of Allen’s previous movies were portrayed with equal parts exasperation and affection, in Café Society these stereotypes shade into bitterness as bickering turns into hostility. Movie buffs will enjoy the name-dropping of classic movie stars and clips from films of Hollywood’s golden era, but those bits of fun aren’t enough to counteract the bad taste this movie leaves.
It’s possible that Woody Allen has run out of things to say, as he jumps from one cliché to the next in Café Society. The fact that Allen created many of these clichés in his earlier movies doesn’t excuse his lack of originality here. He has made fresh movies in the not too distant past, like Midnight in Paris (2011), so I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. Yes, Café Society disappoints, but I would still see Allen’s next movie to find out if he somehow still has the chops to come up with new ideas and new characters.
