It is said that Woody Allen wrote the script for WHATEVER WORKS back in 1977, with the intent of casting Zero Mostel in the lead role, the "Woody Allen" role. Unfortunately, Zero died. Dusted off, updated and filmed three decades later, the film now stars Larry David. But if you use your imagination and listen carefully, you can hear Mostel saying the lines, and with his grandiose, over-blown delivery you can see how the sometimes bombastic material could be funny, or at least amusing. And for that matter, if you can imagine Allen himself delivering his own lines, with his uniquely whiny brand of self-deprecating sarcasm, you might be able to get into the material and story and appreciate the tone, if not the content. Unfortunately, the part of Boris Yellnikoff went to writer-turned-actor David, whose sour apple outlook gave a toxic tang to TV's "Seinfeld" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm." The problem is that David the actor really isn't all that funny and he makes the character unlikable, but not in a funny way.
Of course, the character is suppose to be disagreeable –- and condescending, bigoted, rude, snide, self-centered and misanthropic. But you can be all that stuff and still be unlikable in a likable fashion. Like Mostel in THE PRODUCERS or Woody in DECONTRUCTING HARRY. David just can't pull it off. As he schleps around spouting his mean-spirited insights about the meaning and value of life, while constantly reminding everyone who will listen that he is a genius who was almost nominated for a Noble prize, his Boris is petty, not pious, more abusive than abrasive. And not funny. Boris is not the story's only character, but he is the central character and thus, the voice the film, so that his unceasingly bitter brand of liberalism comes off not being cantankerous, but just plain mean.
Boris was once a respected –- if medicated –- physicist. But having forgone his meds and failed at marriage and suicide, he now scrounges out a living teaching and verbally abusing little children whose parents want them to learn chess. One night, in a particularly unlikely twist, he lets into his life and shabby apartment a teenage urchin named Melodie (Evan Rachel Wood), who has abandoned her family and home in Louisiana to live in the streets of New York City. He treats her with bemused contempt and she responds with wide-eyed adulation. They eventually marry. The question is supposed to be what would a teenage girl see in a 60-something-year-old man. The real question is what could a wide-eyed and optimistic woman like Melodie possibly see in a shallow, contemptuous jerk like Boris. The film's only explanation is that whatever works is what works. It works in the film only as a lame plot twist.
After setting up the Boris and Melodie union, the story expands with the addition of Melodie's parents, Marietta and John Celestine (Patricia Clarkson and Ed Begley Jr.). The Celestines are cardboard stereotypes of Southern Christians, prone to dropping to their knees in prayer with the slightest inspiration. Having cured Melodie of her religious inclination with remarkable ease, Boris (or, rather, Woody) find similar means to rid Marietta and John of their Christianity as well –- the preferred method being getting drunk and having casual sex. And that is pretty much the whole film: Stupid Christians are won over to a New York bohemian lifestyle by learning the wisdom of self-indulgent liberalism. Allen doesn't even bother debating the issue: the Christians are ignorant by virtue of their traditions and beliefs and Boris is the smart one, despite his unending stupid blather, because he is a left-wing Gotham liberal. At least in his earlier films Allen would attempt to establish a verbal give and take between opposing views, even if he stacked the deck on one side; but here he doesn't even take the time to make his characters seem real, even in a Woody-Allen-movie sort of way. Allen doesn't bother treating the Celestines as real people because to him they aren't; they don't belong to his hermetically sealed clique of intellectual urbanites that have long populated his life and his movies. He could just as easily have written them as space aliens.
Woody has never been hesitant in expressing his atheistic ideas in his films, but they were usually encased in a cautious air of agnosticism. Here he is openly contemptuous of religion, and Christianity in particular. While noting that the teachings of Christ were base on good ideas, he adds that so were those of Karl Marx. I suppose the message in WHATEVER WORKS is that the Celestines were saved from the closed-minded bigotry of their religion by virtue of the open-minded examples of New York liberalism. But since Allen never even considers the possibility that there might be value and wisdom in the Celestines' beliefs, it would seem he is the one showing his bigotry. He never gives a thought to the idea that the "whatever" that works for some people just might be something he has never even considered.
Of course, the character is suppose to be disagreeable –- and condescending, bigoted, rude, snide, self-centered and misanthropic. But you can be all that stuff and still be unlikable in a likable fashion. Like Mostel in THE PRODUCERS or Woody in DECONTRUCTING HARRY. David just can't pull it off. As he schleps around spouting his mean-spirited insights about the meaning and value of life, while constantly reminding everyone who will listen that he is a genius who was almost nominated for a Noble prize, his Boris is petty, not pious, more abusive than abrasive. And not funny. Boris is not the story's only character, but he is the central character and thus, the voice the film, so that his unceasingly bitter brand of liberalism comes off not being cantankerous, but just plain mean.
Boris was once a respected –- if medicated –- physicist. But having forgone his meds and failed at marriage and suicide, he now scrounges out a living teaching and verbally abusing little children whose parents want them to learn chess. One night, in a particularly unlikely twist, he lets into his life and shabby apartment a teenage urchin named Melodie (Evan Rachel Wood), who has abandoned her family and home in Louisiana to live in the streets of New York City. He treats her with bemused contempt and she responds with wide-eyed adulation. They eventually marry. The question is supposed to be what would a teenage girl see in a 60-something-year-old man. The real question is what could a wide-eyed and optimistic woman like Melodie possibly see in a shallow, contemptuous jerk like Boris. The film's only explanation is that whatever works is what works. It works in the film only as a lame plot twist.
After setting up the Boris and Melodie union, the story expands with the addition of Melodie's parents, Marietta and John Celestine (Patricia Clarkson and Ed Begley Jr.). The Celestines are cardboard stereotypes of Southern Christians, prone to dropping to their knees in prayer with the slightest inspiration. Having cured Melodie of her religious inclination with remarkable ease, Boris (or, rather, Woody) find similar means to rid Marietta and John of their Christianity as well –- the preferred method being getting drunk and having casual sex. And that is pretty much the whole film: Stupid Christians are won over to a New York bohemian lifestyle by learning the wisdom of self-indulgent liberalism. Allen doesn't even bother debating the issue: the Christians are ignorant by virtue of their traditions and beliefs and Boris is the smart one, despite his unending stupid blather, because he is a left-wing Gotham liberal. At least in his earlier films Allen would attempt to establish a verbal give and take between opposing views, even if he stacked the deck on one side; but here he doesn't even take the time to make his characters seem real, even in a Woody-Allen-movie sort of way. Allen doesn't bother treating the Celestines as real people because to him they aren't; they don't belong to his hermetically sealed clique of intellectual urbanites that have long populated his life and his movies. He could just as easily have written them as space aliens.
Woody has never been hesitant in expressing his atheistic ideas in his films, but they were usually encased in a cautious air of agnosticism. Here he is openly contemptuous of religion, and Christianity in particular. While noting that the teachings of Christ were base on good ideas, he adds that so were those of Karl Marx. I suppose the message in WHATEVER WORKS is that the Celestines were saved from the closed-minded bigotry of their religion by virtue of the open-minded examples of New York liberalism. But since Allen never even considers the possibility that there might be value and wisdom in the Celestines' beliefs, it would seem he is the one showing his bigotry. He never gives a thought to the idea that the "whatever" that works for some people just might be something he has never even considered.