Review: A Rainy Day in New York

Timothee Chalamet is the pretentious Gatsby who is in NYC with girlfriend and fellow Uni student Ashleigh (Elle Fanning), ostensibly for a nice time. However, aspiring journalist Ashleigh manages to secure an interview with secretive, morose filmmaker Roland Pollard (Liev Schreiber), so she has to ditch their planned site-seeing. Soon she’s also bewitched a screenwriter (Jude Law) and a big heartthrob (Diego Luna) as well. Gatsby meanwhile, encounters the sister (Selena Gomez) of a former girlfriend, and hires a hooker (Kelly Rohrbach) to accompany him to a party hosted by his intimidating mother (Cherry Jones), which turns out to be a very revealing evening. Ben Warheit plays a pretentious arty alum of Gatsby, whilst Rebecca Hall turns up briefly as Law’s wife.

 

If you’re reading this review you’re either related to me or are willing to some degree to separate art from artist in regards to Woody Allen. It’s hard to do that with Woody when his films are so personal, and his lead characters so…Woody. But this is a film review, not an indictment or assessment of personal character. Whatever my personal feelings on the guy (and they’re pretty complicated is all I’ll say), I’m just gonna stick to matters I’ve got some knowledge of, i.e. reviewing films.  So let’s put aside the allegations against writer-director Allen (Whose best films for my mind are “Annie Hall”, “Manhattan”, “Deconstructing Harry”, “Blue Jasmine”, and “Alice”), and the subsequent fallout involving actors who have worked with him either supporting or distancing themselves from him.

 

In recent years Woody Allen’s films have been seen as a mixed bag by even his biggest fans, some real ups and downs. For me, he’s always been hit-and-miss and mostly a miss. This 2020 film isn’t the worst film he’s ever made (which would be one of “Manhattan Murder Mystery”, “Bananas”, “Radio Days”, or the trite “Midnight in Paris”), but it’s definitely among his most forgettable and unnecessary. The guy has shockingly little new, interesting, witty, or relevant to say here, even naming his pretentious lead character ‘Gatsby’. Ugh. Woody’s apparent desire to make money and make films seems out outweigh the need for the stories he’s telling to be told, at least in this case.

 

Also not helping things is that as often is the case, the film’s leading man – Timothee Chalamet tries to imitate Woody’s mannerisms and vocal inflections playing the requisite Allen substitute. It’s an instantly and constantly irritating and slimy performance, only bested (or worst-ed if I can butcher the English language for a second) by a brief but insufferably pretentious performance by an actor named Ben Warheit. Thankfully Warheit isn’t in the film for very long. The usually solid Liev Schreiber meanwhile, has never been worse giving a one-note morose and uninteresting performance. Even the normally good Jude Law is far from his best here.

 

I was all set to hate the film early on. However, the performances by the female members of the cast are all rather good, especially Elle Fanning and a surprising Selena Gomez, who is terrific in her best work to date by far. The only issue with Gomez is that her character is horribly written, especially given Woody’s recent ‘issues’. Fanning keeps threatening to truly break out as a star, and although this won’t be the film to do it for her, she’s incandescent. Rebecca Hall, Kelly Rohrbach, and Cherry Jones turn up rather late but are all good too, especially the latter two. A vast improvement over “Baywatch” Rohrbach is stunning and genuinely good, though some may lament that Woody then goes and casts her as a hooker. Of the men, Diego Luna probably fares best as a philandering star, again an ancient cliché but a decent performance. Most of the characters actually feel like stale leftovers from “Celebrity”, which wasn’t any good, either.

 

Those who wish for an end to Allen’s career can be rest assured that he may have finally run out of new or interesting ideas. The film isn’t dreadful and some of the performances are good, it’s just not got much of anything else in it. Co-star Law regrets that the film was temporarily shelved, I don’t think it really needed to be filmed in the first place. Perhaps it’s time for Woody to bow out before even his die-hard fans abandon him.

 

Rating: C