StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Melanie Bouvet The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Brooklynn There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Wuchak I like some latter-day Woody Allen films like 2005's excellent "Match Point" and even 2006's "Scoop," which is amusing, but I don't like 2008's "Anything Else" too much. It stars Jason Briggs as Jerry, a fledgling New York writer with an inept agent (Danny DeVito). As Jerry starts a relationship with a loose girl (Christina Ricci) he gets counsel from an older writer with a great vocabulary named Dobel (Allen), usually while walking Central Park. Stockard Channing plays the girl's irritating mother and a young Jimmy Fallon has a cameo.While Briggs is a quality protagonist, the only parts of "Anything Else" I actually enjoyed are the ones focusing on Jerry and Dobel's mentee/mentor relationship. The movie's dialogue-driven and Dobel uses a lot of obscure terminology so I recommend using the subtitles to keep up with it, as well as the low-key humor, which is quite entertaining. It's also great seeing Erica Leerhsen in a small role.Unfortunately, the movie's done-in by a couple of thoroughly unlikable characters, particularly Ricci's character. Christina looks great and is a fit as can be, but her slutty character is a mass of conflicting impulses. Her actions are controlled by whether or not she's excited by her sexual partner and, of course, only a new partner excites her, which means no sexual relations with Jerry once he becomes "old hat." While she's looking to find excitement elsewhere Jerry does everything he can to keep the relationship going, which is hard to do when the girl's obnoxious mother is living in the same apartment. Not only is it frustrating for Jerry to deal with this situation, it's frustrating for the viewer as well. No doubt these types of aggravating people and relationships are the point of the movie, and it IS amusing to a point, but it naturally makes the viewing experience aggravating as well; and few people want that. Not to mention sympathy for Jerry only goes so far; after all, he's the fool who dropped his perfectly suitable mate (KaDee Strickland) to pursue the sexy-but-unfaithful new girl. In short, he's sleeping in the bad he made.The film runs 108 minutes and was shot entirely in New York City.GRADE: C-

morrison-dylan-fan Taking a look at film maker Woody Allen's IMDb page after seeing his wonderful 1989 film Crimes and Misdermeaners,I was surprised to discover,that in 2003 Allen had made a movie with American Pie star Jason Biggs.With a poll being held on IMDb's Classic Film board for the best titles of 2003,I decided that it would be a good time to take a slice of Allen and Biggs team up.The plot:Finding that his client seems to be permanently stuck to working in small-time Comedy clubs,show-business agent Harvey Wexler decides that he's going to give Jerry Falk a helping hand by teaming him up with a new client of Wexler's called David Dobel.Despite there being a 2 decades gap between,Falk finds himself becoming inspired be Dobel's no nonsense view on life.As he starts writing new material with Dobel,Falk's year long relationship with Amanda Chase begins to hit a rough patch,with Chase saying that she is unable to regain the excitement which she wants had for the relationship. Doing everything they can to bring the relationship back to life,Folk begins to wonder if there is anything else left to make this relationship one worth saving.View on the film:Shooting in anamorphic widescreen for only the 2nd time,writer/director/co-star Woody Allen and Darius Khondji superbly use the format so that the sight gags taking place in the background give the foreground a bold appearance.Along with the background gags,Allen also does very well at using corner shots which show (via inner monologue ) the corners that the characters find themselves in.Whilst the screenplay does feature a number of quick one liners,as Falk attempts to break out of his small-time roots,the screenplay by Allen never allows the viewer to fully warm to the relationship between Folk and Chase.Instead of showing the relationship gradually fall apart,Allen decides to start breaking it apart right away,which leads to Chase being shown as incredibly frosty,due to Allen not allowing any warmth in her relationship with Falk to be shown.Despite Allen's screenplay giving the character a bit of the cold shoulder, the alluring Christina Ricci gives a very good performance as Chase,with Ricci really bringing out the quirkiness in Chase's relationship with Folk.Taking on a role that Allen would have done decades ago,Jason Biggs gives a confident performance which allows him to clearly stand out in the movie,with Biggs delivering Falk's inner monologue's with a real sincerity,as Falk and Chase find out if there is anything else left in their relationship.

easy_eight Actually, awful says it all. Even the character that Woody plays is bad with a few funny one liners. The girlfriend is pathetic and the main character is worse. Don't waste your time. It tried to submit and had to enter 10 lines which is ridiculous because this movie is not worth ten lines. The mother is not very convincing. She overreacts and the scene with her young boyfriend doing cocaine is offensive. It just goes to show how low Woody had gone to try to get laughs and make the movie current. I felt as if the movie were a metaphor for a failing famous old actor dating a 18-year old fawning female fan. All the characters were miscast. It just lacked the magic of earlier films and many later films. Woody is still producing excellent movies. This one is just a bomb. But remember how many great movies Woody has produced and he can be forgiven. And he recovered from this flop and produced many good movies after this one.

db-155 At around 6.5. From what I've seen, the gist of an IMDb Woody Allen rating is that you can add two points to the film if you're a fan, and subtract two points if you're not.My first time seeing this on the small screen, through a sequential re-viewing of the entire works (most of which I'd seen before, but not this one). Of course it has some great lines, deep existential truths and some perfectly observed moments. This is why I would watch any Woody film, you never leave empty. On the other hand, Allen's tendency to ventriloquise any protagonist that isn't him is in full effect with Biggs not really up to the character's dialogue as written (whether this is a problem with writing, acting or casting doesn't really matter). Also, the early script often drags, as Allen's tendency to hammer home a relationship dynamic in the character setup makes for a lot of work in the first part of the film. I guess non-fans might be turned off by the lack of likable characters.In the end though, this one contained some gems in the writing; and insight into the way the world provides you with plenty of impetus to conform to a bad situation, but very little to move to a better one. Don't usually like to write a spoiler, but for me the obvious twist left undone in Allen's assault on authority is that HE should have ended up dating Ricci's character while sending Falk off for 'his own good'. As it is, Allen gave himself the easy out. He's a prick like that. But also one of the best film-makers that ever lived.