Woody Allen’s tumultuous private life seems to spill sourly into this bad-taste story about a novelist, Harry Block (Allen), whose friends and relatives are used as thinly-disguised characters in his books, despite screams of protest from those he exploits (Judy Davis and Kirstie Alley among them).
But they can’t hate him more than he hates himself, as a fantasy sequence with the Devil (Billy Crystal) makes plain.
Block is suffering from a lack of inspiration for his latest book and is as out of focus with life as actor Robin Williams is – literally – out of focus in one of the film’s funniest ideas.
Told via flashbacks, as Block travels to his old school to be honoured – a homage to Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries – rarely has Allen’s use of a movie as a psychiatrist’s couch been quite so evident.
Harry Block
Woody Allen
Joan
Kirstie Alley
Doris
Caroline Aaron
Richard
Bob Balaban
Ken
Richard Benjamin
Burt
Eric Bogosian
Larry
Billy Crystal
Lucy
Judy Davis
Cookie
Hazelle Goodman
Beth Kramer
Mariel Hemingway
Jane
Amy Irving
Grace
Julie Kavner
Leslie
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Harvey Stern
Tobey Maguire
Helen
Demi Moore
Fay
Elisabeth Shue
Paul Epstein
Stanley Tucci
Mel
Robin Williams
Director
Woody Allen
