Woody Allen’s professor has no reason for being

Irrational Man

(out of 4) Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone and Parker Posey. Written and directed by Woody Allen. Opens Friday at the Varsity and Cineplex Yonge-Dundas theatres. 94 minutes. 14A If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, would it make a good Woody Allen movie?

This kind of absurd non-sequitur could apply to many of Allen’s filmic adventures, but particularly Irrational Man, a tired exercise in existentialism that apes but doesn’t improve upon the writer/director’s better work.

It stars Joaquin Phoenix as Abe Lucas, a cynical philosophy professor with a serious drinking problem and an even worse case of the middle-age blues.

“I couldn’t remember the reason for living,” he mutters. “And when I did, it wasn’t convincing.”

His perma-funk doesn’t prevent him from landing a job at sober Braylin College in Newport, R.I., where one of his new colleagues vainly expresses the hope that he’ll “put some Viagra into the philosophy department.”

Nor does it impede him from attracting women: one age-appropriate, the other not, and neither wellwritten. Parker Posey is randy Rita, a married chemistry professor who instantly wants to mix elements; Emma Stone is eager-beaver student Jill, who sees things in Abe that only a lazy screenwriter would see.

Too bad for Abe that he’s not able to appreciate his studly appeal — that earlier hope about him bringing the Viagra proves ironic — but then Allen’s Script- O-Matic machine cranks out another of the filmmaker’s favourite plot conveniences: the perfect crime fantasy.

While desultorily dining with Jill in a café, Abe overhears a woman expressing fears that she may lose custody of her child, due to judicial perfidy.

Abe hatches a diabolical plot that may help the woman, but could also — paging Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Alfred Hitchcock — seriously change his standing in the universe, not to mention at Braylin.

But the universe has no meaning anyway, Braylin even less so, and besides, what better way to spice up your hanky-panky than a little bit of the ol’ ultra-violence, as A Clockwork Orange’s Alex would put it?

But whereas Alex had Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to properly inspire his nihilism, Abe has the Ramsey Lewis Trio’s cocktail jazz standard “The In Crowd” as his motivational music, complementing Darius Khondji’s bright cinematography.

Allen resorts to this finger-snapper so often, it’s evident he can’t quite bring himself to fully explore Irrational Man’s darkest instincts. He can’t even decide on which character he wants as narrator.

It doesn’t really matter. Next year will bring another Woody Allen movie, if the Earth continues its pointless rotation.