Vicky Cristina Barcelona, round 2.

"The preplexingly titled Vicky Cristina Barcelona is Woody Allen's best film in years," announces Sean Burns in the Philadelphia Weekly. "Talk about damning with faint praise."

"Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Allen's 39th film as writer-director, will do little to endear itself to the happily-ever-after crowd, or to those who consider acts of infidelity punishable by impeachment," warns the LA Weekly's Scott Foundas. "For the rest of us, however, Allen has crafted a wry and thoughtful film about the peculiar stirrings of the heart, which is certainly his most accomplished piece of work since Match Point, and his funniest in the eight years since Small Time Crooks." Also: An interview with Allen.

Updated through 8/20.

"Allen's latest film features a narrator (Christopher Evan Welch) who relays, in even tones, the tale of dishy twentysomething American friends, Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), with opposite philosophies of life, and how their respective worldviews are tested over the course of a summer in Spain by a lusty painter (Javier Bardem) and his tempestuous, gun-toting ex-wife (Penélope Cruz)," explains New York's David Edelstein. "Given its particulars - Allen's creepy-old-man gaze, the subtext-free dialogue, the Michelin-guide tour of Catalan art and architecture, the predictable dramatic arc - Vicky Cristina Barcelona ought to have been an eye-roller. What a surprise that it's so seductive."

"In the end, VCB doesn't come off as a mere touristic lark or by-the-numbers filmmaking exercise," writes Godfrey Cheshire in the Independent Weekly. For him, the saving graces here are Bardem and Cruz: "Allen seems to have discovered something - like Columbus in reverse - in these two wonderful Spaniards."

"Maybe enough people have already caught on to the tragedy of Cruz having lost the Oscar for her soulful performance in Volver and feel reparations are already in order - but if that's the case and all this hubbub is in the interest of justice, why not tout her superior performance in Elegy instead?" asks Ed Gonzalez in Slant. "But I digress. What else is there to say about Vicky Cristina Barcelona or Pan-Seared Misogyny in Hot-Blooded Balsamic Mediterranean Reduction that hasn't already been said about nearly every other shoddy film Allen has made this decade, from the director's absolutely contemptible views of female behavior to the 10-dollar words that he scarily jams into the mouths of his characters?"

"I think Woody Allen has produced some work over the past 15 years (since the Soon-Yi 'scandal,' which more or less dovetailed with the consensus opinion that his 'best years' were long behind him) that is worthy of more serious consideration," argues Karina Longworth at the SpoutBlog. "But even if I didn't think the movies deserved it, the sheer laziness that the movies seem to inspire in critics would almost give me enough incentive to passionately defend them."

"Funny, intelligent, provocative and heartfelt, the film will remind moviegoers why they ever loved Woody Allen," writes Alonso Duralde for MSNBC.

"A once-brilliant ear for pungent dialogue turned tin and out-of-touch is more understandable than a bored journeyman churning out mediocrities on vacation," sighs Shaun Brady in the Philadelphia City Paper.

"You can't claim that Woody Allen's rapid rate of production doesn't show," agrees Duncan Shepherd in the San Diego Reader. Still, here, the "half-baked aspect has its upside. In consequence of the cut corners and rushed development, a lot happens in only ninety minutes, and Allen can lay out on a broad canvas his vision of human discontentment and self-ignorance. He can lay it out as a pattern, not as an isolated instance."

Allen "has proceeded through the years with more ups and downs, more ins and outs, more breakthroughs and breakups, and more hits and flops than that of any other director I can think of, from any period in film history," writes Andrew Sarris in the New York Observer. "Now in his 70s, he has managed to astound me by coming up with one of the most felicitously written, edited, acted and directed romantic comedies of his entire career. I may still give an edge to 1979's Manhattan and 1977's Annie Hall, but not by too much."

"There has already been some criticism of the film's disconnect from the world the rest of us live in; that is, these people never seem to worry about money and rarely seem to work," notes Andy Klein in the LA CityBeat. "The same could be said, of course, of all but the most consciously political comedies of the 30s and 40s; they're not supposed to reflect all the dull, quotidian stuff. Allen has never pretended to be reflecting the lives of the 'little people,' except, perhaps, in The Purple Rose of Cairo, which made a point of both the wonder and the absurdity of life up on the screen."

"As Cristina, an anything-goes sexpot who entertains artistic pretensions, Johansson could be Brigitte Bardot dubbed with a flat American accent," notes the Stranger's Annie Wagner. "If you entertain the idea that she might be parodying herself, it's almost an interesting performance."

Armond White in the New York Press: "For several decades, the media has praised Woody Allen's vanity as art. But next to a true artist like Rohmer, Allen's small-minded egotism - and laughable lack of craft - are pathetic."

"[A]fter years of making neurosis a fun and accessible lifestyle, the director here taps into enough life-station-in-the-balance anxiety to keep this trip from being a total bust," finds Nicolas Rapold in the L Magazine.

"Minor Allen, the movie is nevertheless cause for hope for those who insist on returning every year," writes Ben Kenigsberg for Time Out New York.

Scott Tobias talks with Allen for the AV Club.

Michael Ordoña chats with Hall for the Los Angeles Times.

Earlier: "Elegy and Vicky Cristina Barcelona," Michael Koresky and reviews from Cannes.

Updates, 8/15: "Although Vicky Cristina trips along winningly, carried by the beauty of its locations and stars - and all the gauzy romanticism those enchanted places and people imply - it reverberates with implacable melancholy, a sense of loss," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "Mr Allen may be buoyed (like the rest of us) by his recent creative resurrection, but this is still the same glum clown who, after the premiere of Match Point, his pitch-black, near pitch-perfect 2005 drama, commented that cynicism was just an alternate spelling of reality. Ah, life! Ah, Woody!"

"Allen began his career as a mildly acerbic comic entertainer, and at the moment it looks like that's how he's going to end it," writes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. "It's literally difficult to believe that the person who made this picturesque, clueless, oddly misanthropic picture also made Annie Hall and Crimes and Misdemeanors."

"I gave up on Allen long ago," grumbles Lawrence Levi at Nextbook. "In fact, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is the first movie of his I've watched in over a decade. And nothing's changed: It's as blinkered and lazy as the 90s films I got sick of. And critics who haven't drunk the Woody Kool-Aid agree."

But Steve Dollar, writing in the New York Sun, suspects "something has given him a genuine kick in the rear. Most likely, it's a pair of Spanish actors, Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz. Their embodiment of a smoldering carnality in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Mr Allen's latest film, could have been a facile cliché, but instead finds a sublime and eloquent comic release."

Time's Richard Corliss: "I like the new movie, within reason; the question that nags at me is whether the film, appearing during this slow patch in Allen's career, is the beneficiary of our diminished expectations."

"Shooting in Europe for the fourth time following Match Point, Scoop and Cassandra's Dream, Allen seizes on the chance to weigh American notions of love against the continent's more libertine spirit," writes Scott Tobias at the AV Club. "He comes away with a witty and ambiguous movie that's simultaneously intoxicating and suffused with sadness and doubt."

"It doesn't feel like a comeback, necessarily, but it does feel like a tentative and promising step forward," suggests the Oregonian's Shawn Levy.

Vulture lists "Ten Woody Allen Sex Scenes Better Than the Ones in Vicky Cristina Barcelona."

Online viewing tip. Lynn Hirschberg talks with Cruz for the NYT.

Updates, 8/16: James Rocchi at Cinematical: "I felt, after seeing Woody Allen's latest, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the way I do after I've been to an excellent tapas restaurant; I'd been presented with a series of small moments of flavor and texture and presentation, some more pleasant than others, and while the overall experience didn't add up to a full meal, it was still a sincere pleasure." Also, interviews with the cast.

"Allen's misanthropy and depressive worldview seem too persistent to be byproducts of a personality cultivated for public appeal," writes Zachary Wigon at the House Next Door. "No, the absurd level of fantasy inherent in a film like VCB seems indicative of the fact that the filmmaker wishes for a world where things could be better, prettier, nicer, sweeter - even if those things include arguments between lovers who might just kill each other."

"[W]hat makes the film so sadly beautiful is Allen's treatment of Vicky and Cristina, two lovely young women enjoying those formative years that are now such a distant memory for the man directing them," writes Bryant Frazer. "Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a film with a pretty big heart, and it feels for the compromises people make in response to the looming terror that is the enormity of the rest of their lives."

"If Vicky Cristina Barcelona is at times a wonderfully nuanced drama about love triangles and squares and other oddball shapes, it's a also a subtly funny film, built from a very different mold from earlier Allen comedies," writes Ed Howard. It "feels fresh and vibrant, mocking its droning literary narration while telling a tale that continually bursts beyond the borders of such staid explications."

Jen Johans finds VCB "breezy, earthy, intoxicating, and frankly, sexy as hell."

"If you like watching privileged beautiful people flitting from expensive homes to fancy restaurants to dazzling tourist attractions to plush hotel rooms and gala gallery openings, you're likely to find something to enjoy in this movie," writes Marcy Dermansky. "I was hoping for a guilty pleasure, but after watching Vicky and Christina drink their zillionth glass of wine, I had enough."

The AV Club's Nathan Rabin and Scott Tobias present a Woody Allen primer.

Michael Atkinson: "I'm frankly getting tired of being the kid in the crowd pointing at the emperor's bare-naked buttcheeks, but someone (besides Chicago Reader's JR Jones) has got to make the case for the achingly obvious: Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a sophomoric, cliched howler, so ludicrously bad in so many ways one doesn't know where to begin."

Update, 8/20: "Mr Allen's typical alter egos are variations of the neurotic nebbish he has so often played," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "Brainy, not brawny, they seduce with charm and wit, not physical magnetism. One reason movie critics heaped such lavish praise on his movies during the Annie Hall period was that so many of them were fuzzy-haired brainiacs like Mr Allen, living more in the mind than in the body.... When in his work have you seen a hookup in which a hunk and a babe make eye contact and fall into ravenous lovemaking?... Vicky Cristina Barcelona is the first Woody Allen film to infuse [his] lofty world with serious body heat."

Posted by dwhudson at August 14, 2008 12:37 PM