Crisis in Six Scenes

Anyone who has been watching Woody Allen since the sixties until now will paradoxically be at a disadvantage. You just need to take a list of his most famous trademarks and check off all the topics. War, faith, psychiatry, paranoia, hypochondria, literature, screenwriting – it's all here. Not in the form of a purebred series, but rather in the form of a fragmented film with a total length of half an hour. The television format suits Allen less, as he shoots at the same pace and in the most typical mood we have experienced in every one of his retrospectives or nostalgic reflections, something that seems almost inappropriate in the age of streaming services – and for the first time in his career, unfortunately, a bit mannerist, because it does not bring anything new to the genre or even to himself. I would like to forgive all of this, but for the huge casting mistake in the form of Miley Cyrus. I really wished for this incomprehensible move to work out, but any scene with the former child star is a real torture and an example of genuine non-acting. I also have a little problem with Elaine May, whom I have loved to see by the Master's side for a whole sixteen years since the legendary Small Time Crooks, but from whom, despite all her charm and effort, you unfortunately can't understood every other word. Thanks to a truly wild finale, a blissful feeling began to spread all over my body, but although I want to give a higher rating, I would then be just a blind fanboy and Allen does not deserve it for something cute, but still merely recycled. However, if this was his last leading role, he could not have performed better, because even this far from the eighties, he is a master of his neurotic stuttering. (12.10.2016)