dj4our Blog

 

Sondra Pransky (Johansson) is a wide-eyed American journalism student spending her summer vacation in England with her friend Vivian (Romola Garai). The girls go on a night out to see a magician, "The Great Splendini", a.k.a. Sid Waterman (Allen, playing a Brooklyn magician in London-yeah, I know. Sigh). He's an old school magician, peddling card tricks with a vaudevillian flair. With each illusion--or as he calls them, "experiments"--Allen looks out to the audience with an expression that suggests he has as much trouble believing it worked as they might. It's a pleasant enough turn for the actor, slightly self-deprecating, but still it kinda seems old.

Of course, Sid picks Sondra for his grand finale: making a woman disappear in his "Dematerializer". Only, once she is in his magic box, she is met with an invading presence, the spirit of recently deceased investigative reporter Joe Strombel (Ian McShane, visiting from "Deadwood"). On his way to the Netherworld, Joe was given a tip that his reporter's brain can't let go, so he has jumped ship (literally) and swam back through the River Styx to tell the first reporter he meets. That just happens to be Sondra, although she's not really a reporter but she does have a fledling journalist's nose. Joe puts her on the trail of British socialite Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman), the wealthy son of a Lord that Joe has learned may be the elusive Tarot Card Killer. If it's true, he has just handed Sondra the supposed scoop of a lifetime. Yawn. She gets excited and drags her new grandfather-magician-pal, Sid all over town as the spy on Lyman. He becomes insecure Watson to her overconfident Holmes. They posing as father and daughter (blech!) and wheedle their way into Lyman's world. Naturally, Sondra's feminine assets draw the attention of hunky Hugh Jackman, er, Lyman, and she in turn is swooned by his sophisticated even though she's determined to see him locked up for murder.

 

There it is, Allen has created a romantic comedy/murder mystery/ghost story. It moves around at a brisk enough pace I suppose, its characters talking a mile a minute and tossing off the sort of screwy one-liners that Allen cut his comedic choppers on. There is something appealing about intelligent, well-spoken people tossing around spewing silly. Allen gives a lot of the good material to himself, trotting out his neurotic nebbish routine for another go. What makes it work so well in I suppose is the generation gap that he's using to his advantage. He tried a similar move back in 2003 with ";Anything Else" (the last of his movies he appeared in), but it didn't work when he was up against Jason Biggs. Biggs was trying too hard to be a Woody Allen stand-in in that one and it felt forced. Being of the opposite gender has its advantages for Johansson. She turns an earnest and well, adorable performance, playing a naïve Nancy Drew that the older Allen has to struggle to keep up with. Despite being from Brooklyn, she's milquetoasty enough to need to wear her glasses to see the man she is kissing, but scatterbrained enough to get talked into bed by an opportunistic film director (wishful thinking, Woody?) who skips out before giving the promised interview. Her character's intensity and excitement is refreshing and Jackman being smitten with her makes perfect sense. While he first notices her because of the red swimsuit that hugs every shapely curve, it's her oddness that keeps him hanging around (of course he's so handsome, who wouldn't catch the aroma?)