Review of “Scoop”
The problem with being one of the world’s most prolific and consistently strong filmmakers is that every new film has a lot of comparison available. Woody Allen is now 71, with more Academy Award nominations than any other writer/director, and fans all have a favourite film to recall: Annie Hall, Hannah and her Sisters, or even last year’s Match Point perhaps. Scoop is Allen’s 40th feature as director and a return to his more classic comedy style, with Allen playing the neurotic to everyone else’s straight person. But it’s not going to be remembered as one of his best. There are some nice comic scenes as Allen does his now familiar verbal routines, dropping one-liners about problems he has with children, traffic and the English, but he seems out of place and lost in the mannered world of a high-class English murder mystery.
Allen plays a shabby magician Sid Waterman, touring London with his show, who pulls Sondra Pransky (Scarlett Johansson) out of the audience in order to make her “dematerialize” on stage. Waiting in a magic wardrobe while Sid says the magic words, Pransky is visited by dead journalist Joe Strombel (Ian McShane) who gives her information about the identity of a serial killer on the loose in London. With journalism already established as her preferred career option, Sondra decides to follow the clues, dragging the hapless Sid with her as she pursues Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman), the wealthy son of a British Lord, through his various palatial houses in search of evidence.
There’s not much that really works well here. The plot – a standard whodunit affair – lacks any mystery. The romance, despite the impossibly beautiful duo of Johansson and Jackman, lacks either passion or anything more sinister that potential murderers could bring to the bedroom. Allen needs them in love and under the sheets, and - hey presto - they are: the cheap magician has become cheap director. One gets the feeling that Allen wrote this quickly as a vehicle to get back on the acting side of the camera, and die-hard fans will no doubt enjoy some of his angst-ridden work Personally, I agree with Sondra who says to Sid in a moment of frustration in the film: “would you quit fooling around.”
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