It’s rather hard to care about Woody Allen’s dreary tale
Irrational Man Rating:
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, Parker Posey, Jamie Blackley Directed by: Woody Allen
Running time: 96 minutes
Woody Allen throws a lot of smoke and mirrors into the plot line of his new movie, Irrational Man, but at the core of the story is a dynamic he knows all too well — the romance between an older man and a younger woman.
It was there in his last film, the mediocre Magic In the Moonlight (which also starred Emma Stone), and it can be traced back more than three decades before that to his 1979 classic, Manhattan.
We are far from Manhattan territory, here, however. Allen is hit-and-miss, these days. When he misses, all his cutesy jokes and narrative tricks fall flat. Which is what happens for the first halfhour of Irrational Man. Luckily it picks up somewhat after that.
The movie opens on Abe (a potbellied Joaquin Phoenix), driving a car, talking in voice-over about life and, pseudo-ominously, murder. Well, we see where this is going.
Abe is a wreck — a drunk, womanizing, pretentious philosophy professor who has landed a job teaching at a small-town university. There is an aura of mystery about him; the ladies love him, or so Allen would have us believe.
Fellow prof Rita (Parker Posey) doesn’t let her own marriage get in the way of putting the moves on Abe, seeing in him an escape from her own dreary existence. But he refutes her advances.
Jill (Emma Stone) is intrigued even before his arrival. She talks about him with her boyfriend, Roy (Jamie Blackley) and with her parents (Ethan Phillips and Betsy Aidem).
Once in his class, it isn’t long before her work has caught the teacher’s eye, and soon the two are sharing long walks across campus and meaningful discussions about the world and our place in it. She falls hard for him, but again, he resists.
Everything changes when Abe and Jill overhear a conversation about a corrupt judge who is jeopardizing the relationship between a divorced woman and her son. Abe hears in her complaint a call to arms — it is up to him, he believes, to take action and eliminate this evil man.
Suddenly his passion returns, along with his will to live. He now has a purpose, and mojo, too.
This is the Woody Allen of Scoop, minus Allen himself, which is what his movie is sorely missing. Phoenix is convincing enough as the washed up blowhard, but he lacks comic timing. And Stone, the director’s latest fixation, is given too little to work with to keep our attention.
The murder mystery keeps things moving, and prevents the dreary love triangle from bogging things down, but it is ultimately of little interest. We don’t care about Abe, or Jill, or Rita, let alone the judge, let alone the events tying them together. And so it’s rather hard to care about this film.