I had been told. I had even read it. "It's not a typical Woody Allen
film." But I still wasn't prepared for how un-Woody-Allen-like
Match Point is.
As your self-appointed Expectation Adjustor, I feel it's my duty to
warn you. More importantly, though, I'm here to encourage you to check
out this film, even if you think a Woody Allen film is the last thing
you feel like watching (perhaps that moment is
precisely when you should pick it up).
First, let me say I think it's a good thing that
Match Point is so
not
Allen. I'm a fan of his films, but mostly the older ones, and I'm very
glad to see he's becoming less predictable in his old age. The biggest
surprise—even though
MP has been described as a "comedy drama"—was that I detected exactly
no humor in this film. Not even a smidgen of wry, dry, vintage Allen humor.
Maybe I just missed it because I was too busy trying to calm the dread
in my stomach as the story progressed. It's a classic, impending train
wreck, in a Russian literature sort of way. At the beginning of the
film, the main character is even reading Dostoevsky, which, along with
the film's tragic-opera-laden soundtrack, sets up a story as wrought
with doom as one could be.
There's too much I don't want to give away, so I'll stop here. Just be
sure to check out the film's tags for a more gutteral sense of what to
expect. (And I'd love to hear from anyone who sees the film and detects
any clear markings of Woody Allen.)