Scoop
Unlike some of his more commercial contemporaries–including Harvey Weinstein pets Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino–Woody Allen has always had the final cut on his movies. But then what are the corporate honchos risking with this indulgence? They know familiarity is one of many things that draw us to movies, and they know with Allen not to expect any surprises. Unfortunately the industry often behaves as if familiarity were the only attraction.
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Match Point, Allen’s best movie to date, was criticized in some quarters because it transplanted many of his concerns from New York to London and because it had an uncharacteristic seriousness and precision. Scoop, its lame successor, is also set in London and also costars Scarlett Johansson as another American greenhorn (a journalism student instead of an aspiring actress) who becomes involved with another wealthy Englishman who has a country estate. And once again there’s the plotting of the murder of a girlfriend that calls to mind Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy.
Match Point has some metaphysical reflections about chance and some moral reflections about the innocent victims of murder. But a search for the metaphysical implications of Strombel chancing on a potential news story after he dies and reappearing in the world inside a magic act turns up only some very lazy screenwriting.
