‘Whatever Works’ Doesn’t

Who says time travel isn’t possible?

I spent 92 long minutes in Woody Allen’s cinematic wayback machine yesterday, reliving almost all the 60’s pseudo-psychoanalytic cultural neuroses, nihilism and negative leftist judgmental-stereotypes he popularized then that still have us on the couch and at each other’s throats.

Allen wrote the script more than 30 years ago with Zero Mostel in mind as the obvious, self-involved, Allen alter-ego lead character living in a psychobabble New York City hell of his own creation. But a not so funny thing happened on Zero’s way to the Forum years ago, leaving Allen to look for an actor who could convincingly play the part of a brilliant Jewish string theory former professor in his sixties who manages to schtup and then marry a vulnerable, naive teenager. The familiar ring of that scenario is integral to the theme of “Whatever,” which is that there is no God, everything that happens is just random cosmic kaka, and so we should all do whatever gets us our jollies. (more…)