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‘Rifkin‘s Competition’, which premiered in theaters and on video on demand on January 28, is Academy Award profitable author/director Woody Allen’s forty ninth characteristic movie.
The film tells the story of Mort Rifkin (Wallace Shawn), an instructional and elitist movie critic who accompanies his significantly youthful spouse Sue (Gina Gershon) to a movie competition within the Spanish metropolis of San Sebastian. On the competition, Sue, a press agent for Phillipe, a scorching younger French filmmaker, falls for her shopper and Mort tries to seduce an excellent youthful native girl he meets, Dr. Joanna.
Earlier than I proceed with my critique of ‘Rifkin’s Competition’, I’ve a confession to make. I’ve by no means preferred Woody Allen motion pictures and by no means understood individuals who did.
As a religious cinephile who reeks of the arthouse, I’ve been relentlessly taught and repeatedly informed that Woody Allen is a superb, grasp moviemaker.
“‘Annie Corridor’ is a masterpiece!” “‘Crimes and Misdemeanors’ is superb!” “‘Broadway Danny Rose’, ‘The Purple Rose of Cairo’ and ‘Zelig’ are beautiful achievements!” the cultural gatekeepers all informed me.
However having watched Woody’s filmography through the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that none of that’s true.
After I watch a Woody Allen film, I notice just one factor, that Woody Allen is now, and at all times has been, a pedantic and pedestrian filmmaker who churns out vacuous, vapid, useless, insipidly mundane, middle-brow bullshit underneath the guise of being a high-brow, arthouse auteur.
In primary phrases, Woody Allen is nothing however Adam Sandler for the mental set, and their egg heads are too far up their pretentious behinds to see that actuality.
As you may think about, my opinion of Woody’s work, which, to be clear, isn’t a perform of hindsight however truly predates his troubling private life being made public, has lengthy put me at odds with the overwhelming majority of my cinephile tribe, however what are you able to do? I simply name ‘em as I see ‘em, penalties be damned.
My greatest downside with Woody Allen movies is, not surprisingly, Woody Allen.
I by no means thought Woody was charming or amusing, in actual fact, I’ve at all times discovered his nebbish neuroticism to be grating to the purpose of repulsive on-screen. I might by no means think about any actor annoying me as a lot Woody Allen… after which I noticed ‘Rifkin’s Competition’.
In case you suppose Woody Allen is irritating, wait ‘til you get a load of Wallace Shawn being Woody’s de facto stand-in because the pathetic protagonist of ‘Rifkin’s Competition’. Shawn, who seems to be like a shell-less turtle, and whose signature lateral lisp makes you are feeling such as you’re dodging spittle for your entire 91-minute run-time, makes the sniveling Woody Allen appear to be the suave Cary Grant.
The plot of Allen’s motion pictures are at all times romantically ridiculous, and in line with custom, in ‘Rifkin’s Competition’ the repugnant Mort seems to be 35 years older than his spouse Sue, and perhaps 45 years older than his object of need, Dr. Jo. The one strategy to make these couplings appear remotely plausible could be to have them happen on ‘Fantasy Island’ underneath the watchful eye of Mr. Roarke and Tattoo.
The truth that Woody Allen is anticipating audiences to just accept {that a} magnificence like Gina Gershon’s Sue could be married to a troll like Wallace Shawn’s Mort, or that the beautiful Elena Anaya as Dr. Jo would ponder being with Mort, is so past absurd as to be totally delusional and insane.
Woody Allen has gained three Oscars for screenwriting, however that claims extra in regards to the groupthink of the academy than it does about Woody’s writing skill. ‘Rifkin’s Competition’ options extra of the identical pointless plot, lazy exposition, stilted dialogue, and flaccid humor as Woody’s different work, besides worse.
The movie additionally makes an attempt to be a tribute to traditional European cinema, with homages to Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘Breathless’, Francois Truffaut’s ‘Jules and Jim’, Federico Fellini’s ‘8 ½’, Ingmar Bergman’s ‘The Seventh Seal’, amongst others sprinkled all through. There’s even a hackneyed nod to ‘Citizen Kane’.
However referencing genius auteurs and their works doesn’t make Woody Allen an awesome filmmaker. The truth is, it solely spotlights his inventive chapter and highlights his relentlessly tedious, unimaginative and uncreative writing and path.
In recent times, most notably after the #MeToo motion got here to the fore and a 2021 documentary sequence ‘Allen v Farrow’ aired on HBO chronicling Woody Allen’s daughter Dylan’s claims that he molested her, weak-kneed critics have soured on Woody Allen movies.
For years, I used to be at all times on the skin wanting in when it got here to Woody Allen. I used to be by no means in on the joke. However perhaps I used to be simply forward of the curve. Woody’s motion pictures had been at all times terrible, and the allegations of depravity in his private life don’t have anything to do with it.
The reality is that ‘Rifkin’s Competition’, which is being skewered by many critics, lays naked the truth that the emperor Woody Allen has no garments, and I’d argue that he’s been stark bare all alongside and that his simple-minded, sycophantic worshipers among the many crucial neighborhood had been too blind to see it.
No matter whether or not you suppose ‘Annie Corridor’, ‘Crimes and Misdemeanors’, and ‘Broadway Danny Rose’ actually are masterpieces, it’s merely plain that ‘Rifkin’s Competition’ is a dreadful and abysmal film. The truth is, the one debatable query in regards to the film now’s whether or not or not it’s Woody Allen’s worst. I feel it’s, which is sort of an achievement.
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