Hollywood Ending

How can I say that? Surely, there are other movies that more suit the title? Well, NO. Most bad movies are bad because there are so many people in the control of the production. No matter what you think, the Director is usually powerless if executives want to add or rearrange movies the way they seem fit. It's these EXECUTIVE types who normally ruin the movies you think are so bad. But WOODY ALLEN has COMPLETE artistic freedom to whatever he wants. He is one of the ONLY directors in the US who have this power. And that's what makes this movie so HORRIBLE. This is a making movies-by-habit and it is a total slap in the face to anyone who buys a movie ticket. Woody Allen, who so often has demeaned other directors and writers for making movies that seem unworthy of the medium has just made a movie for no other reason than he was given the money to do it. I cannot believe Woody Allen put this thing together and thought it was good. He couldn't. IT'S AWFUL. It's UNWATCHABLE. It's thrown together like three eggs about to be scrambled. I don't want to harp on age differences, but when Woody comes in to meet his girlfriend Debra Messing, she couldn't even pass for his DAUGHTER! She looks like his GRANDDAUGHTER. But that disturbing casting does not ruin the movie. It's the WRITING. Woody Allen is making comedies when he is no longer funny. And he throws lines out there just to see if they stick to the wall. These are non-stick walls, folks. I'll give you an example. In one scene, someone mentions he should buy a mercedes and he says, "I can't be driving around in a 29 Mercedes, people will mistake me for Himmler." Now, that is about the STUPIDEST thing I ever heard. HIMMLER? Just because it's slightly obscure, Woody thinks it will cause a laugh. No, Goering is too well-known, he goes for Himmler. And it's a TERRIBLE decision. He also has many jokes later in the movie about a guy whose act is biting the head off of rats, and then we get several rathead-biting comments in the film. It's a TERRIBLE MISCALCULATION. The FIRST rat-joke wasn't funny, it was STUPID. None of these jokes have any wit. Two times in the movie, Woody tries to evoke his past genius. One is a cocktail scene early on when some literary names are banted about, and some sex jokes with it, ala Manhattan. Also, there is a scene where Lea Teoni and Treat Williams talk for an extended time the camera stays still while they go in and out of the room talking. It's very "Hannah-Crimes-Husband" and it would have worked, but the dialogue is so bad, you don't even care. A worst movie ever would be one in which someone takes TERRIBLE advantage of you as a fan and a movie-goer, and then insults you in the process. A movie that wants you to walk out of it in the first ten minutes and lose your money. This is the one. I think every year, I am going to just send Woody my seven bucks and save myself the torture.

Allen is a director, and here he plays one as well, who becomes psycho-psematically blind right before he starts shooting his latest picture for 60 million dollars. And so, his agent tags along to make sure he stays on the picture in one piece. The one liners here are classic Allen as there is not one scene that doesn't have them and while they don't all work, when they do it's laugh out loud. The film is also a good dish for movie buffs. The ending itself, by the way, is absolutely appropriate. Favorite lines- the black plague (he calls this as a disease in an early restaurant scene), call Dr. Kevorkian (after the first screening of the movie), and- you should put a full page ad in the DGA cause you'll never stop working (after Thiessen shows Allen her assets). A-

Hollywood Ending[First-Viewing, TV](Woody Allen)- Woody Allen, Tea Leoni, Mark Webber, George Hamilton, Treat Williams Woody Allen directs, writes and stars in this semi-comedy, semi drama film about a Hollywood director (Allen) who is directing a film, and meanwhile suddenly goes blind. Meanwhile he has to work with his ex-wife(Leoni) who is now dating the owner (Williams) of the studio producing the film. The film has its typical Woody Allen jokes, and delivers in its comedy portions, very funny at times. The plot is also very interesting, especially how Woody goes blind. The film has some very good points that even make much more sense now with what Bush is doing in the world (Woody says `Thank god for the french'). Teo Leoni gives a good performance, and Woody is his charming self, Woody fans will him in this one. Mark Webber also gives an interesting performance as Woody's son. Overall a fresh screenplay from Woody, with decent direction and good performances. 9/10

Some of the one liners here are so hysterical, you will think about them long after the movie ends and still roar. This is a very funny movie and plays right into the audience expectation Allen is mocking in his script. After the war in Iraq, Woody's comment about "Thank God the French exist" is even more amusing than when he first wrote it. Yes Thank God for the French, they've made some funny movies too. And Thank God for people like Woody Allen. The world needs him. I love how his running trademark showing him with younger women still continues to upset certain members of both the public and critical elite. I think at his age, Allen can pretty much do and write what he wants. Personally, I enjoy the fantasy; it's a sly little dig against the morals of American culture, especially in the Ashcroft/Bush JR era. Older men and younger women have been around forever, and Woody definitely isnt the only one experiencing this condition, so get over yourselves, uptighters, and learn to laugh at life. The dumbing down of society (referred to often in the screenplay) is highly evident after the negative reactions this has received. It's only a movie; it's not the end of the world. You either get it or you don't.

I am overwhelmed with the modern movies' aspiration to rely on new fashions. Thank God we have Woody Allen as a beacon of tradition and craftsmanship in the domain of movie-making. The movie is extremely funny and lacks all the nuisances which plague newer ones in order to make them more appealing to the main core audience nowadays: male teenagers. Woody Allen plays the role of an over-the-hill director which undertakes the mission of making a movie against the wishes of its producer.He receives a blow when he becomes blind right before the beginning of the shooting. The plot revolves around Allen's blindness, which is guarded as a secret by his agent, and the process of the filming with a blind director. I do not have to mention the many a hilarious moments this situation produces.

I really don't understand why your users rated this movie as a mediocre one (when I write this, it has 6.3 points). This is a superb irony on the irrational fashion that runs through the Western Elite (European and American). It's a game between rational and irrational, under the pretext of a blind director who initially wants to make a nonconformist movie and he ends by making it "per accidens". "Thanks God the French exist!" says Woody Allen at a certain moment. Well, we should really thank God for that. The French have style. The French have art (or used to have). What came under my eyes very rapidly was that, although Woody Allen movie is surprisingly commercial, very easy to understand from a superficial perspective, it is a movie about postmodernism, about how art is made. Tristan Tzara, my compatriot and the initiator of the Suprarealist movement called DADAISM would have been very enthusiastic over the movie in the movie (which, a propos, is never shown to us!!!). You should watch this movie with your eyes and ears and with your mind open, because you'll see something else.

source: Hollywood Ending

For years Woody Allen has always expressed his debt to Bob Hope sense of humor and delivery. Well we finally see the proof in this Allen spoof which sort of updates Hope's 1956 film "That Certain Feeling". The Allen character is hired by his ex-wife's fiancee to direct a film. The Hope character was hired by his ex-wife's fiance to ghost write for him and the parallels continue. Allen has definitely slowed down and although there are some very sharp and witty lines and the slapstick is kept to the minimum, the film doesn't really have any of 'heart warming' qualities of the original. This is a good watch for those new to Allen but but ultimately disappointing to his real fans, of which I am one, in that no new ground is covered and Woody shows his age. But a 'burned out' Allen with few no thoughts is still funnier than the vast majority of today's pretenders.

I've read a half-dozen scathing reviews of "Hollywood Ending," and no one seems to get the point that this is all an elaborate, and very witty, joke. It's a bad movie about making a bad movie. Get it? Technically, the movie has a dozen real screwups -- you get long shots of the backs of talking actors' heads, two characters hold a conversation that takes them off the frame, etc. All that is mirroring is what's going on in the final product of "The City That Never Sleeps," the movie within the movie. It has a rabbit-out-of-a-hat climax, another error. And it has a joyful denouement -- a "Hollywood ending," get it? And despite all this stinker technical stuff, the movie is remarkably funny, even Marx Brothers funny in places (that scene in the bar with Leoni and Allen is priceless). I can understand the joke going over lots of people's heads, but how come they're all movie reviewers and dumb joes like me can see this in an instant?

Although there were definitely some funny lines, 'Hollywood Ending' was incredibly boring. Ridiculous slapstick, gags that went on WAY too long, and tedious mundane bits. I know every Woody Allen film can't be as great as his 'Manhattan' or 'Annie Hall', but this movie was simply dreadful. Couldn't wait for it to be over ~ almost unheard of for one his flicks. Gave a very generous 3* out of 10.