Very well executed

Deeper than the descriptions

Absolutely Fantastic

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

DJ(Lyonne, a typical teen girl - and our narrator), the daughter of heartbroken divorced Joe(Allen, his typical neurotic self, needing pushing by loved ones) sets him up with the unhappily married Von(Roberts, sweet, and... well, she doesn't have a lot of personality). Without her knowing. ...well, the latter's in therapy, and the former listens in. That old story. And along the way there are subplots, and this is, at its core, about falling in love, its effect on what one thinks about the future, and how sudden it can be - even when already infatuated with someone else.I don't often watch musicals, but this one is irresistible. Charming, hilarious with fast-paced dialog, background reactions, quick throwaway lines, and a memorable cast of characters, all of whom are portrayed by talented and well-known actors. The big numbers(and just *try* to stop humming them) are dominated by long takes and few cuts, with everyone in the vicinity singing and/or dancing, such as the early scene in the ER where doctors, nurses and patients giving it their all. There are sit-com-like misunderstandings and some pretty evenly divided political jokes, with the Republican son(hey, he has his reasons... maybe you'll learn them in this) and the liberal rest of the family. It takes place over a year, taking us around New York, Venice and Paris. The running time is 94 minutes sans credits.There is a little strong language in this. I recommend this to anyone who is at all into this type of film. 7/10

Ed Norton, Barrymore, Roberts, Hawn, Alda, Portman... what's not to love? Well the boring, plodding, banal and mind numbingly worked story line that is as intricate as a cereal box. How can anyone like this? Did they get awards because of the cast? This proves to me that pretentious nits make a good market for an inane movie a college student could have composed. It reminds me of those self-indulgent "I am melancholy pay attention to my deep thoughts" of the 70s genre, which is how old you have to be to find this mildly entertaining. Woody Allen should just give it up. Then again, people will pretend he has talent because they are suppose to. Kind of like people paid a zillion dollars a ticket to see washed up Streisand in concert.

A fragmented modern-day family in New York City--filled with siblings and step-siblings, step-parents and in-laws--fall in and out of love to the tunes of the 1940s. Woody Allen wrote and directed this bursting-into-song celebration of valentines and vitriol; he also co-stars as the ex-husband of Goldie Hawn who hasn't been able to find a decent woman since their divorce. His daughter has access to a beautiful woman's psychiatric sessions (straight out of "Another Woman") and coaches her father to woo the girl with his inside-knowledge. Meanwhile, two teenage girls have a crush on the same boy (reminiscent of "Hannah and Her Sisters") and Drew Barrymore's society sweetheart is thinking of dumping her lovestruck fiancé for an ex-convict whom everyone thinks has gone straight. The songs are not integrated into the mix smoothly, and the actors Allen has cast are not great singers (including himself). Still, there are some lovely moments and a few stray funny lines, but the cast members don't match up with their characters--and the dialogue is so static and vacuous it leaves everyone stranded, shrugging and nodding to one another instead of actually communicating. ** from ****

What a disappointment but I have to say that I knew from the first scene that this would not be one of his best. The songs are extremely average, nothing spectacular about them at all! And most of the characters are uninteresting shells.Some of the scenes (in fact most of them) seem like early rehearsal. Especially the parts with Tim Roth who usually is a very talented actor.To make things worse there's just a few funny jokes in here. In fact other than the narration from Natasha Lyonne, a few decently funny moments between Alda and his republican son and Allens regular character + a dance group consisting of Grouco Marx look-a-likes are the only worthwhile parts of the film.It felt extremely uninspired and rather annoying at times. What was the Julia Robers sub-plot for example was extremely unfunny and just plain annoying.It seemed like this film didn't know what to make fun of or how to do it. Most of the time the dialog is just tame and uninteresting and it just seems like it tries so hard without making it.That said Natasha Lyonne and Alan Alda was great. Allen was good but weaker than usual. Again a few funny moments. I actually laughed out loud once or twice but overall this was just decent and by far Woody Allens weakest film.