Whatever Works feels like it’s Woody Allen’s “Shut Up and Leave Me Alone” film. I can only assume Allen didn’t play the role of lead character Boris Yellnikoff himself because it would have seemed too on the nose. Whatever Works is something of a mish-mash of Annie Hall and Manhattan — yet by no means living up to the standards of those two classics — and had Allen decided to play the lead role it would have felt like a rehash, but instead he found the next best thing. It’s just too bad the film didn’t come together as well as the casting appeared to.
Allen delivered what I felt was the best film of 2008 with Vicky Cristina Barcelona and when word reached my ears he was tapping Larry David to star in his next film the combination seemed like a match made in heaven. In Whatever Works David plays Boris, a retired quantum physics professor who was once “almost nominated for a Nobel Prize” and now spends his time teaching “inchworms” (kids) how to play chess all while berating them for every false move they make. When Boris isn’t raining chess pieces on the heads of youngsters he is yucking it up with his friends at a neighborhood coffee shop, which is where the film opens up as Boris is urged into telling his story.
The film begins with Boris falling into a long-winded monologue directed at the audience, an audience only he can see and something that goes to prove his self-professed vast intelligence as he sees things everyone else doesn’t. The monologue is a sign of things to come as it is both eternally funny, cynical and neurotic, but at the same time it is just too damned long and has the lasting effect of seeming scripted. Of course, everything in a film is scripted, but it shouldn’t feel that way. A lot of Whatever Works is just too wordy and when coming from Allen it seems appropriate, but when it comes to David’s performance the overwhelming amount of words seem to get in the way.
Along with carrying the traits of all of Woody Allen’s very own memorable appearances in such films as Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters, David also tries to carry off the mannerisms. What I can best describe as night terrors send Boris babbling and squirming down his staircase in a style that seems like an Allen impression more than an actual character performance. Where real originality comes in is with Evan Rachel Wood and her performance as Melody St. Ann Celestine, a runaway from Mississippi that lands on Boris’s doorstep in the middle of the night after crawling out from under a pile of trash.
Melody is everything Boris sees wrong with the world, but her ignorance serves to inflate his ego as any young and impressionable youth would a grouchy ol’ neurotic know-it-all. When Melody asks Boris if she can stay with him for a while following an act of unprecedented kindness, he reluctantly agrees even though we as an audience know nothing we have learned about Boris to this point supports such a decision. Therein lies the film’s weakness as it lacks the courage to stand by its protagonist’s convictions, which alleviates all hope for surprise.
I may sound like I am coming down on the film for being too cheerful, but this isn’t the case. In fact the film dwells in Boris’s negativity only to have it either ignored or misunderstood by Melody, which pretty much cancels it out sending us through the motions. As a matter of fact, everyone seems to ignore Boris to the point he almost becomes insignificant and only useful in terms of giving the audience a laugh every once in a while as well as serving as the glue to tell the story of those that remain interesting.
Where the film manages to keep its footing is with Melody. Wood gives a performance worthy of attention and praise as a character brimming with such positivity is not exactly what Wood is known for, but she carries it off with such exuberance it makes Melody’s ignorance eternally lovable.
Adding to the madcap drama is Melody’s family as they come searching for her with their own problems and small town attitudes only to be changed within hours of their arrival in New York City. Patricia Clarkson plays her church-going mother and Ed Begley Jr. plays her father. The two have divorced since Melody’s departure and their staggered arrivals in New York keep things moving just as boredom began to set in from listening to Boris’s belly-aching.
Whatever Works is a perfectly fine movie, but at just over an hour into its 92-minute running time I took a peek at my watch to see how much more was left. With Larry David reading lines that came off so obviously scripted I began to lose interest, but the introduction of Melody’s family brought the spark the film needed to bring it home. While David’s style of acting may not be best suited for reading lines as much as speaking more off-the-cuff, it was fun to see him teaming with the talent of Allen for this one time. I’m not sure the lines would have been as believable from anyone other than Allen himself.
