Hollywood Ending (2002)
Directed by Woody Allen
Written by Woody Allen
Starring Woody Allen, Tea Leoni, Treat Williams, Mark Rydell, Debra Messing
Release Date May 3rd, 2002
Published May 2nd, 2002
Being from the Midwest, Woody Allen's humor is somewhat lost on me. Allen's humor is at times very specific to New Yorkers, which can be a turn off to Midwesterners like myself. In his latest film, Hollywood Ending, Allen isn't too New York. Oddly enough, the lifetime New Yorker is too Hollywood.
In Hollywood Ending, Allen is Val Waxman, a washed-up former Oscar winning director now working on TV commercials in Canada. Val's luck is about to change with a little help from his sympathetic ex-wife Ellie (Tea Leoni). Ellie is now a Hollywood producer and is pushing her studio head fiancee (Treat Williams) to hire Val for a movie called "The City That Never Sleeps." Val is not an easy sell for the studio as he has a history of being difficult including outrageous demands of time, money and even daylight. After some prodding and a meeting with Val, the studio reluctantly agrees to hire him with the caveat that he can be fired at any moment.
So excited is Val at landing the job that he loses his sight. Val suffers from psychosomatic blindness. So, Val should probably drop out of the picture until he gets his sight back, but on the advice of his agent Al (Mark Rydell) he stays in the picture even though he thinks he should quit.
Val: "Don't you think people will notice a blind director?"
Al: "What? Are you kidding me? Have you seen these movies today?"
Allen has some terrific moments of physical comedy, built around his being blind and attempting to negotiate the movie's set. With the help of an on-set translator (Barney Cheng), hired to help Val communicate with his Chinese cameraman, Al and Val try to make it seem like everything is fine so that Val doesn't get fired. Eventually Ellie discovers Val's secret and then she too tries to help him pull it off.
The cast is rounded out by Debra Messing as Val's ditzy girlfriend and George Hamilton as a vapid movie producer. The cast is good as is most of Allen's script, but Hollywood Ending is troubled by a tendency to be too Hollywood. A lot of the film's humor is aimed at the film industry, which is a ripe place for satire. However, it is at times a little too inside the industry. Jokes about agents and references to the director's guild will be lost on casual film fans.
Allen still has a great ear for dialogue and his classic self-deprecating humor is well in place, but Hollywood Ending is just not funny enough. While Hollywood is a wonderful source for satire (see David Mamet's hysterical State & Main), Hollywood Ending just doesn't have enough good jokes. The humor is scattered throughout and in fact the film is funnier in scenes between Allen and Tea Leoni as they rehash their failed marriage. Allen is indeed a funny guy, maybe someday all of us will get the joke.
