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Tony Roberts' character would fit right in today - a stock-broker who spends all his time on the phone or at work, has to pencil his wife in for dinner and must work on financial reports while on holiday. Though intended to be an over-the-top portrayal in the 1970s, such pressure is all too real today, but the film loses nothing in spite of that. Dick's wife finds gentle diversion in trying to help Woody's character find love and of course, they find it with each other.
Many great comic lines from Allen throughout, some of which admittedly are recycled from his stand-up days, but are good nonetheless. By the end of the film, each of the three characters have found what they really want from love and the final scene between Allen and Keaton is funny, touching and upbeat.
DVD quality is excellent.
We start the film with Allan Felix (Allen) watching Casablanca in the Cinema and feebly impersonating Bogart as he leaves the Cinema. The film proceeds with an imaginary Bogart advising Allan on how to deal with Women. Allan as you would expect is pretty hopeless!
This film is consistently funny with the blind date scene being one of the greatest comedy scenes ever filmed.
The script (based on Woody Allens own stage play) is full of great dialog, as you would expect.
Diane Keaton is wonderful in her role, and Tony Roberts is very funny in his supporting role as the business man who leaves a telephone number so he can be contacted everywhere he goes.
"I'll be at 362-9296 for a while; then I'll be at 648-0024 for about fifteen minutes; then I'll be at 752-0420; and then I'll be home, at 621-4598"
Remember this film was made more than a decade before mobile phones even existed in brick form.
The film finishes with a great recreation of the end of Casablanca.
If you don't like Woody Allen then you probably won't like this. However, if you have any appreciation of Woody and haven't seen this, you should buy this DVD now.
Woody Allen wrote the screenplay for Play It Again, Sam by adapting his own 1969 hommage to Casablanca stage play ... but left the directing to Herbert Ross. Not one of Allen's best films - although certainly packed with some his best one-liners (hence four stars) - the film does start off more or less as Quintessential Allen: Allan Felix (Allen) stares open-mouthed in desperate adulation at his screen hero Rick/Humphrey Bogart, who apparently knows how to handle both women and his own emotions. Allan/Woody/the film's very first line of dialogue occurs outside the cinema as he shambles away from the matinée, "I'll never be like him ... I'm so depressed ..."
The film contains some of Allen's best visual gags, such as trying to look 'cool' running a coin through his fingers, discussing the merits of numerous drugs and pills, fiddling around with the Oscar Peterson record, tossing a salad, attempting to fend-off two bikers, and grunting nervously at his first date ...! And yet, the film ends on an uplifting note of self-denial and nobility ... as it parallels his favourite film.
Overly-busy and self-important people are coolly parodied by Allen stalwart Tony Roberts, whose arrival at any location commences with telephoning his PA to inform her where he can be contacted along with alternative telephone numbers.
That we often give in to our rampaging hormones instead of Thinking It Over before aiming at the clearly-wrong target, is amply shown us as Woody, desperate for A Date - any date - approaches a spaced-out chick in the museum. "That's a rather lovely Jackson Pollock ... What does it say to you?" Without batting an eyelid or acknowledging his presence, she drones into, "It restates the fundamental negativeness of the Universe. The hideous loneliness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of Man forced to live in a barren, godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror and degradation forming a useless bleak straitjacket in a black absurd Cosmos." Somewhat stumped but still undaunted, Woody asks, "What are you doing Saturday night?" Chick [still ignoring him]: "Committing suicide ..." Woody: "And Friday night?" Chick [finally noticing him]: gives him A Dirty Look and just walks away.
Well, you would, wouldn't you ...?!!
* * *
If ever Woody Allen said a truer word in any of his films.
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