Sorry, this movie sucks

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The old cliché of a person being great artist but a terrible human being is certainly true for Sean Penn's fictional Emmet Ray, self-dubbed the second best guitarist in the world. Why he attracts the attention of more than one female is beyond me; Thurman's Blanche is drawn to that rough, unhemmed quality about him like writers are drawn to trouble subjects because they make for great stories. And Allen too has made this little misstep - there is nigh a thing redeemable about Ray but for his soulful jazz guitar, which must be exactly what Allen finds himself so eager to capture. The framing device is an unnecessary one, too clever for its own right; Allen and other jazz alumni are filmed as talking heads recounting the great life of Emmet Ray with a wistfulness for his mastery...there is a subjectivity quality to their stories of course, but this seems like an artificial method of further mystifying the great enigma that was Ray. A pity then that Allen's script is as relatively straightforward as it is. He did not often delve as dark and deep as Interiors did, and here even the most emotionally dramatic scenes are smothered by the incessant cheery jazz as the backing track to Ray's life. No woman would ever be secondary to his music, and it rings so true. Not even such an innocent, demure maiden like Hattie, as Samantha Morton in one of the performances of her time. She winds back the clock to the times of pantomime and silent film, and in each wide, uncontrollably smile, and each smothered tear, has brought us such a defined and memorable character without saying a word. Allen almost never has to bring the camera closer; her body language works furiously in place of her mouth, whether it is enthusiastically replacing a flat tire for the prize of hearing one more tune from Ray, or the way her adorable chews indicate her satisfaction, and in perhaps the best scene of the film, the way she wordlessly convinces Ray to let her accompany him on his trip. Her eyes water, and her entire face crumples up, and Penn rambles and rambles...and relents, even his emotional defense broken down.In a similar scene he does the same thing and humorously forbids Hattie from giving him a birthday present, before eagerly allowing it once he sees that it is something he desires. This is one of his many vices of course - a sort of contradictive possessiveness and consumerist hunger for objects that don't contribute to his music at all, but which he wants nevertheless. His ego has convinced him that he wants these things, and that no woman would ever want to leave him, and that his musical performance is beyond reproach. Allen, naturally, adds a comic layer to this furiousness and decadence - see how Penn dangles from the model moon and awkwardly untangle himself and let the music come to his fingers. And then a smash cut to later where he is literally smashing and burning the offender. How dare it intrude on his performance. But most of all the character is destructive, and Allen has somewhat obscured this fact. Django Reinhardt emerges as this huge, imposing figure within the film, dogging each of Ray's steps, even as he is never physically seen. How would Django react to seeing the great Emmet Ray? Surely he would not faint. Would he even recognise him? As Allen's faux-documentary style intends, perhaps not.

Celebrity to me wasn't a terrible film but it was disappointing and I consider it one of Woody Allen's weakest. Sweet and Lowdown however was a big return to form, let down only by the odd bit of lagging pacing, and is not just one of Allen's better films since Husbands and Wives but also in the better half of his filmography. Allen's films- apart from some of his very early stuff- are always very well made, but the handsome production design and colourful cinematography make Sweet and Lowdown a gorgeous-looking film, and Allen's directing also is nigh-on perfect. The haunting and mellow soundtrack is one of my personal favourites actually from his films and CD-release-worthy. Sweet and Lowdown also has a great and beautifully balanced script, some of it is charmingly witty in typical Allen style, but it also has a lot to say and does so in a way that intrigues and doesn't come across as self-indulgent and the dramatic scenes are among the, in my opinion, most poignant and sensitively done of any Woody Allen film since Husbands and Wives. Allen's mock-documentary contributions are fascinating and you learn a good deal about the music, artistry and Emmet Ray(which Allen delivers in a way that strongly suggests how he connected with the subject matter and what was being said), and the story itself has the ideal balance of comedy and drama, reflected in Samantha Morton's character Hattie, and has an immense charm to it. The characters, although a few of them are on the thankless side(ie. Ellie), are not likable- Hattie is an exception though, because she's the character that you relate to the most by quite some distance- but are written with realism, the relationships between them are identifiable and acted with every bit as much. Sean Penn gives a bravura performance and really embodies Emmet Ray, although Ray is as purposefully dislikeable as you can possibly get there's genuine sympathy to be had from him in his final scenes. Samantha Morton is even better and I'd go as far to say that she steals the show, she's really heart-breaking, has eyes and facial expressions that are really expressive and even when silent her eyes and face tell volumes. Uma Thurman is not used very much but she has a quite colourful character and she relishes it without being at odds with the rest of the film. All in all, after being disappointed by Celebrity, Sweet and Lowdown was a big improvement and is a wonderful film. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Sweet and Lowdown (1999)Besides the funny idea of creating a musician who never existed and having talking heads of real experts to support the idea (done better in Zelig and, more parallel, The Rutles), there is very little happening there to keep the movie going. There are a few funny lines, for sure, but many more that are either reused Allen quips or just flat comebacks. At first Sean Penn seems perfect for his role, and he fortunately plays his part no imitating Allen. But either he has so little to work with or he plays this guitarist so superficially, it never takes off, we never feel for him or his situation. The fact that he "fades away" at the end of his career is something like the whole movie, which didn't quite form in the first place. Funny and clever the way Scoop is funny and clever--not too much.Samantha Morton puts in a great performance as a mute woman. And the music, a la Django, is unassailable.

The story is told about the now-defunct British humorous magazine "Punch" that, when someone complained to the editor that "Punch is not as funny as it used to be," he replied "It never was." The same could be said of Woody Allen. For years the received criticism of every new Woody film has been "Woody is not as funny as he used to be". He never was. Exactly when he was funny varies according to the particular tastes of the critic in question. Some will tell you that he has not been funny since "Hannah and Her Sisters", others that he has done nothing worthwhile since "Manhattan". There are probably even some purists who will insist that nothing in his later work can compare to early slapstick comedies like "Sleeper" or "Bananas".I myself have never been an adherent of the "Woody is not as funny as he used to be" school of thought, for two reasons. Firstly, not all his films from his supposed golden age in the seventies and eighties were equally good; several of the sketches in "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex….", for example, today come across as frankly embarrassing. Secondly, by no means all of his films from the 1990s and the 2000s are weak; he has made a number of good films during this period, of which "Sweet and Lowdown" is one of the best.In structure the film is a mock-documentary about Emmett Ray, a jazz guitarist from the 1930s. Ray is a fictitious character, although the spoof is so well done that it becomes entirely credible. (The day after I first saw this in the cinema I went to the library to check out what it said about him in an encyclopaedia of jazz. Needless to say, I did not find his entry). Scenes from Ray's life are intercut with shots of jazz experts, including Allen himself, being interviewed about Ray's music. To add to the idea that this is a non-fiction documentary, the various commentators give differing versions of anecdotes about Ray or differing interpretations of his life.Allen, of course, is well known for his love of jazz, and it would appear that he first conceived the ambition to make a film about a jazz musician in the early seventies, but this did not come to fruition until 1999. He originally planned to play the part of Emmet Ray himself, but unless he has a much wider range as an actor than he has hitherto shown it was a wise decision to cast Sean Penn rather than himself in the role, as Ray is far from being a typical Woody character. For a start, he is neither Jewish nor a New Yorker. Nor is he a nervous, angst-ridden, self-deprecating intellectual- indeed, he is far from being an intellectual at all. Great artists are not always great men, and for all his brilliance as a performer Ray is a deeply flawed individual- crude, boorish, an alcoholic and a kleptomaniac. Besides his music, he has a sideline as a ponce running a stable of prostitutes. His idea of a hobby is to go down to the local rubbish dump and shoot rats, even inviting his girlfriends to join him in this dubious sport. Obviously the last of the great romantics.Ray is also conceited about his talent, proclaiming himself to be the second best guitarist in the world after his idol Django Reinhardt (who was of course a real person). Ray's relationship to Reinhardt, whom he does not know personally, is a complicated mixture of jealousy and hero-worship; he adores Reinhardt's music, but also hopes to be able to better it. Ray's one redeeming quality is his passionate dedication to his art, and Penn (in an excellent performance) is able to suggest all the many facets of his personality and to make him someone who is not totally unsympathetic despite his many faults.The other really excellent performance is that of the young Samantha Morton as Ray's sweet, innocent girlfriend Hattie. Hattie is mute, which means that Morton could only express her character through gestures and facial expressions. It is a performance similar to that of Marlee Matlin as the deaf-mute heroine of "Children of a Lesser God", although with the difference that Hattie, although mute, is not deaf. Uma Thurman is also good as Ray's wife Blanche, an upper-class socialite who marries Ray out of what might be called "nostalgie de la boue". She is attracted to him precisely because he is crude and uncultured with dubious personal habits- they first meet when she catches him stealing an ornament at a party.There is plenty of humour in the film, much of it centred upon Ray's sense of self-importance, such as the slapstick sequence about his attempt to make a stage entrance seated on a wooden crescent moon lowered down from above. It is not, however, a pure comedy, but also a character study and a film about the power of music to transform even the most mundane of lives. I am by no means a great jazz buff, but I was enthralled by the beauty of the music in this film (performed by the guitarist Howard Alden). This is one of Woody's most impressive films from the last two decades. 8/10