Whatever Works (2009)
“Funny” isn’t synonymous with “fresh,” and if Whatever Works seems as though it could have fallen, fully formed, out of the 1970s, that hardly seems a damning flaw. And while I certainly could have used the dollop of broad anti-Red State commentary when Woody Allen was off doing phony, faux-nihilist bullshit like Match Point, I’m happy to say “better late than never” and leave it at that, because “funny” is also not synonymous with “trenchant satire.” See, the movie’s M.O. is in the title. It tells you right off the bat. It’s about a crotchety suicidal genius forced to share the planet with microbes and mouth-breathers. That works. A sort of Curb Your Enthusiasm to the nth degree, tricked out in existential angst and sweet redemptions. That’s inevitable here, and it works, too. A parade of unhappiness buoyed by many chance victories, the film delights in being a film, features a protagonist who has an inkling that his misanthropy is mostly for show, and seems to come closest to expressing Allen’s own philosophy on luck and love and art itself: who would’ve guessed that honesty works best?
