Here's the Scoop

We saw Scoop tonight.

It’s so silly! But I say that in a good way. It was as light as a popover. Miss Scarlett was funny and cute. Hugh Jackman is ridiculously attractive, all tall and handsome. Woody is jittery as ever, but these days, he seems to have a frozen left eye. Something’s up. Maybe he’s just really old?

The story is a whodunit kind of thing. Nothing new in the terrain. The set up is fun, what with a dead top reporter coming through the magician booth to give clues. And both the London scenes and the countryside scenes throughout are quite beautiful. The cinematographer does a great job. The very dated, bad special effects and the bad costume of death with the sickle only add to the silly charm. And wait until you hear the bad puns. One involves a sandwich and a great artist. You can guess.

Is Scoop one of Woody’s greats? Aw hell no. But at least it’s Woody. He seems less able to come up with complicated stories with nuanced characters as he ages. But at least he started high, so his sinking isn’t so bad. You can see the sketch he’s made. And it’s pleasing, if not fully realized.

And he still rips off other movies, shamelessly. In Point Blank, with its high class girl/low class girl problem and with this movie, the rowboat scene at one point, you get the feeling that Woody Allen loves A Place in the Sun more than he even knows.

Honestly, there’s not much else out there at the plex. So, this was a good choice. And I think for Woody Allen, in the late autumn of his career, it’s not a bad idea to release his trifles during the summer when the adults have nothing else to see anyway. You get the sense that even he knows the gig is up...but he kind of layers that point into the film, too. He’s honest, this guy. You might not like that he has shacked up with his daughter, but as an artist he’s a good one. He uses himself and his understanding of life quite cannily even in something as stupid and fun as this flick.

Get the Scoop. Why not?