Harry,sorry,HARRY.
Six shrinks later, three wives down the line, and I still can't get my life
together," Harry Block tells his psychiatrist in DECONSTRUCTING HARRY.
Woody Allen, playing Harry as a parody of himself, is back. With his usual
self-deprecating humor, he spends copious time with his shrink, and, as
always, he obsesses over sex. At his son's grade school, Harry advises his
little boy, "The two most important things are the work that you choose and
sex."
Woody surrounds himself with a cornucopia of friends (Kirstie Alley,
Richard Benjamin, Eric Bogosian, Billy Crystal, Judy Davis, Mariel
Hemingway, Amy Irving, Julie Kavner, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Demi Moore,
Elisabeth Shue, Stanley Tucci and Robin Williams among others),creating too
much of a distraction as these excellent actors parade through the movie.
The jumbled result is a frequently humorous show -- although there are not
as many big laughs as in most Allen films -- that disappoints as often as
it surprises. Still, a mediocre Woody Allen comedy is better than the best
films of some directors.
As in THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO, Allen plays games with reality and fiction
and upsets the time-space continuum. Harry Block is a writer of
semi-autobiographical tales. In one of the more interesting twists, most of
the roles in the picture are played by two characters. There are the
movie's main characters and the ones from Harry's book and short stories,
who in turn are modeled on the main characters.
To complicate things further, Harry's stories constantly mock Woody Allen's
recent troubles. Harry describes himself, for example, as "a guy who can't
function well in life but can in art." Or as his psychiatrist tells him,
"You expect the world to adapt to the distortion you've become."
DECONSTRUCTING HARRY is filled with vignettes of comedic anger, and, like
most of Allen's works, it pokes fun at his fellow Jews. After several dozen
movies, most of Allen's characters seem to be repeats from his previous
movies. The two fresh ones this time are newcomer Hazelle Goodman's black
hooker role and Robin Williams's fuzzy part.
Robin Williams plays a actor named Mel, who gets "soft" during the filming
of a movie. He gets out of focus, and there is nothing they can do to
sharpen him up again. ("Daddy's out of focus, Daddy's out of focus," his
son taunts him.)
Woody looks older and more tired than ever in DECONSTRUCTING HARRY, but he
can still turn a phrase and create an unforgettable image. Although his
recreation of hell with Billy Crystal as the devil shows no spark of
creativity, his rendering of a Bar Mitzvah with a STAR WARS theme does.
http://www.all-reviews.com/videos-2/deconstructing-harry.htm
Is it just me or is Mongo a little more out of focus everyday?
