Celebrity Review

A skywriter spells HELP over Manhattan in the first minutes, which turns out to be the most concise statement the film makes. Woody Allen hands his own part to Kenneth Branagh, who responds with a full impersonation, the stammer and the head bob and the fluttering hands, so the lead becomes a party trick with nobody inside it.

Sven Nykvist's black and white photography is doing serious work the script never repays; the fashion show, the literary party and the pier where a girlfriend drops the only copy of his novel into the water all look wonderful and lead nowhere. The structure is a revue of sketches: Charlize Theron's supermodel, Melanie Griffith's movie star, Bebe Neuwirth choking on a banana during a lesson in oral technique.

Two things work. Judy Davis, even when pushed into Allen mannerisms of her own, finds real panic in a woman rebuilding herself after sixteen years of marriage. And DiCaprio, present for one long sequence as Brandon Darrow, wrecking a hotel suite and then gambling in Atlantic City, plays entitlement at a speed and with a cruelty the rest of the picture only talks about. When he goes, the current goes with him.