Director: Woody Allen
Screenplay: Woody Allen
Starring: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Nick Apollo Forte
Running Time: 84 minutes
Genre: Comedy
Danny Rose (Allen) is an unsuccessful talent agent, who is stuck with acts such as a one-legged tap dancer, balloon animal makers, and novelty bird acts. The one act on his books that is showing any kind of promise is washed up lounge lizard, Lou Canova (Forte), who is enjoying a comeback due to a nostalgia craze. Danny manages to get Lou a very prestigious gig, but Lou, who is already married, refuses to go on stage unless his girlfriend, Tina (Farrow), is in the audience. He persuades Danny to not only go and pick up Tina but to pretend to be her boyfriend in public, in order to keep her and Lou's affair secret. To make matters even more complex, Tina's ex-boyfriend is a gangster, who is convinced that Tina left him for Danny, and puts a hit on him.
This film really is a romp. It abandons the usual intellectual, up-town Woody Allen style of comedy for a more earthy style, with the humour coming more from situation and character than the usual Allen wisecracks and quips. It also abandons the Manhattan elite setting more typical of Woody Allen films with Allen here playing the fast-talking agent, and set in the swamps of New Jersey, seedy clubs, cheap offices and warehouses. The film even has some action sequences with chases, and fights. Mostly it is a nostalgic tribute to the New York showbiz world of the 1950s, despite apparently being set in the 1980s, it's filmed in black-and-white, and is bookended by scenes set in a deli where agents and ageing comics gather to tell jokes and showbiz stories. Mia Farrow turns in a great performance as the loud, brassy Tina, all gravity-defying hairdos and huge sunglasses that hide half of her face. It's not a great film and it's not hugely funny but it is very enjoyable and features a very funny shoot-out in a warehouse.
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