Premise: A low level theatre agent playing the beard for his top performer's mistress ends up running from the mob.
Remind me why I've been putting this movie off. I think for some reason, I always worry that I've run out of the good ones in Allen's filmography already. Given that even the good ones of his end up feeling incomplete, when I get to a bad Woody Allen movie, it'll play like a term paper that I forgot about until the night before it was due. However, when the movies are only 84 minutes long, I'll put up with just about any movie.
This fits the Woody Allen mold pretty exactly. The movie is super short. The premise is half-baked but fun. I like the framing device of it being a story a bunch of Catskills comedians are telling at a diner. I'll admit, when it started, I thought the movie would actually be an anthology of them all telling shorter stories, but the single story works too. Allen is his typical neurotic self which I enjoy. Mia Farrow is good too. I barely even recognized that it was her. Even when they aren't explicit like this, Allen's movies usually have the feel of someone telling you a tall tale, so I don't mind the non-sensical jumps and turns in the story.
This isn't my favorite Woody Allen movie, but it is one of the better ones I've seen. And again, it's only 84 minutes. Why can't more of the "pretty good" and "decent" movies I see be that short? Save 2h25m for the great movies.
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
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