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.

Yahweh may not agree, but He did create a person unbalanced enough — at least from what I read — to play the lead: Larry David of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm (mine was curbed shortly after the fade from black).

In scenes that must have been twenty or more pages long, David’s Boris Yellnikoff –emphasis on “yell” — alternately kvetched and sneered in gawd awful-long soliloquy to the fourth wall about sophomoric penis envy, vaginal snapper fear, Oedipal lust, suppressed homosexuality, atheism, NRA hating, fly-over land cretin bashing, inner-selves yearning to be free and other urban elitist Nietzsche-Kant-Sartre politically liberal arrogance that used to be such great co-ed thigh openers at frat house mixers or the White Horse Tavern while channeling and analyzing Dylan Thomas’ inner Freudianism Jungism.

Do not go gentle into that good theater darkness for this one, my friend, unless you can stand the past life regression to “Oooh, so what were Freud and Jung really saying?” by the keg.

Well, Freud said sometimes a cigar is just a cigar while Jung thought that a woman was a woman but a cigar was a smoke. But lemme play it out for ya …

My name is Sigund Freud outa Vienna, and I bring youuuu … a VIRUS for the Jung !!!

You make me feel so Jung
You make me feel my head has sprung
And every time I look at you
I feel so very, psychological.

The Moment that you speak
I wanna hold my head and freak …

“That’s sooo clever and deep. And just where is your room in this great big house?”

Heh, heh…

Wouldn’t every aging man like to live the Lolita fantasy of a nubile bed-mate who swallows every cockeyed pessimistic rant about life and love and God without challenge while offering a Viagra? Sure you would. And I’ll bet Woody likes it too, which is why his Yellnikoff seems an awful lot like the Max Von Sydow misanthrope of “Hannah and Her Sisters.” It’s on his mind. It’s in his life. Woody may look mellow, but there’s a raging river of recurring themes that cannot find resolution behind those horn rims — emphasis on horn.  Maybe that’s why he’s gone to a shrink every day for the past 50 years.

How Allen managed to inject his own psycho-neuroses, political and social views on the American culture, I don’t know. Was his wimpy, over-therapied, pseudo-intellectual image something America wanted to imitate? Or were those who most identified with Allen already that way? Whatever, the unvarnished anger and snobbery of the urban chattering class toward those who lead traditional lives (married, kids, religious, employed at non artsy jobs — particularly those who lead those traditional lives in “flyover land”) is on display in this film for all us artistic elites to wallow in.

Guys who like football are hiding their lust for guys by watching guys in tight pants. Guys who own a gun are compensating for the inadequate size of their penis. Belief in God is a form of arrested mental development. All of which reduces to Allen tellin’ those schmucks who think they’re happy with their routine lives that they aren’t.

Some of Allen’s solutions?

Admit you’re really gay and live the lifestyle. Throw away that Bible that’s causing sexual repression and discover the new Jesus of a bisexual menage a trois. Take advantage of teenage girls. Try and commit suicide — twice — as Yellnikoff does.

Try? I’d have been willing to kill that sob for sure, especially after finding a $55 parking ticket on my car after the movie.

Whatever.

And now, you come out with this “Whatever Works” film. What, you think that shemdrick Larry David who plays that louse Yellnikoff can out match me with a formula? Never happen! I created formulas. In one of his rants he tried to pull a fast one on the audience about Job. Yellnikoff whined that all that Job got for his piousness was suffering. So, why suffer? Right? Wrong. I was teaching Job how to be patient! Something you, Yellnikoff, and apparently that David character have never learned.Let me tell you something, Woody, as your father who has tried to give you everything you would need to make a nice life, your attitude hurts me, and I might add your mother, to the quick.  What? I don’t have enough aggravation with this pedophile Michael Jackson who now thinks he’s going to moon-walk into heaven,  that thief Madoff, Obama’s spending spree, and that little rat with a beard, Ahmenijadh! Now, I need tsuris from you too?
 
What got into that head of yours? First, you make “Broadway Danny Rose,” with Mia Farrow, whom your mother and I loved. It was a nice little film that did well in the art houses. If I remember correctly, Mia Farrow’s character, Tina Vetali, starts off with a “Whatever Works” attitude but learns through her acquaintance with your character, that schlamazel, Danny Rose, for whom every good and loyal deed is punished, that there is no solace to be had from acting like an animal, from getting what you can when you can no matter who you hurt along the way. Don’t you remember how she came back to celebrate Thanksgiving with you, Herbie Jason and his parrot, Barnie Dunn the stuttering ventriloquist, and that blind xylophonist?
 
Now, you make this stinker, “Whatever Works.” This, this Yellnikoff character is you. I saw that. Your mother saw that and had to leave the theater before the film ended while it was still dark she was so embarrassed. Everyone in the theater knew the truth.  
 
What? You think you can marry your adopted daughter then absolve yourself by making a movie in which some miserable reprobate tells the audience they’re a bunch of no-good-niks who worry about their vitamins, cholesterol, and their retirement accounts for nothing because life is just a series of mathematical anomalies void of any meaning? That wasn’t what I meant in Ecclesiastics.
 
Where did you ever learn that happiness is found, by “filching” a little something here or a little something there, no matter what the consequences, no matter who is hurt? You know who filches? Pigeons!
 
And, let me ask you this; if “filching” has made you so happy then why is it that you felt it necessary to make such a cynical and angry film? Have you forgotten about the three “L’s,” “Love, Loyalty, and Longevity.”
 
You read Ecclesiastes the wrong way, Woody. Kohelet, the narrator, did not mean that everything we do is futile, vain, void of meaning. He meant that our works, our choices, are a matter for me to judge and that you should fear me and obey my commandments! And for that obedience you will be rewarded with life. In other words, choose life and love. That means turning away from lust and avarice at every opportunity. Look what it got Madoff! Believe me, Kohelet was not saying that you should marry your daughter, adopted or not. I know, I asked him! He was as shocked at the news as we all were.
 
I know you, you’re probably not reading this any more. But, by some miracle if you are, let me ask you something: Would it hurt you to make your mother and I proud  by making a movie about something nice like that gentile Disney or one of the other nice film makers?
 
Woody, you’re nearly seventy-five. You’re too old for this. Whatever we did wrong was in the past. It’s time to forgive and forget. Walking around with a chip on your shoulder will never ever result in you’re finding happiness, filching or no filching.
 
Remember son, a man devoid of religion is like a horse without a bridle!

Your loving father,
 
God

With “Whatever Works,” a deeply unpleasant, unfunny “comedy” starring Larry David, Allen takes a disturbing stride towards condoning this form of nihilism. We’re far beyond “The Heart Wants What It Wants,” the memorable theme explored so tenderly in Allen’s 1986 masterpiece “Hannah and Her Sisters.” In that film there were at least very real and human consequences to infidelity and other selfish, romantic pursuits. No more. “Whatever Works” might as well be titled “Whatever Works Works.”

David plays Boris Yellnikoof, a misanthrope’s misanthrope and relentless Leftist elitist incapable of humanity or kindness. In a series of unfunny monologues, Boris breaks the third fourth wall, acknowledges those of us in the audience and spews the same philosophy on the worthlessness of life that recently drove him out a window in a failed suicide attempt. To anyone within earshot, he’s an insistent ranter sure he’s the only one who’s figured it out because the rest of us worthless insects are embalmed with pop culture and religion.

The former academic who was once “almost nominated for the Nobel Prize” lives in a decrepit walk up and teaches chess to kids (actually he hurls insults at them) in order to meet the monthly nut. One night, on his way home, he finds a teenage waif at the bottom of his stairs, Melodie St. Ann Celestine (Evan Rachel Wood), a runaway from Mississippi. Before you can say “Why Does Woody Always Bore Us With This Troubling Obsession of His,” the sixty-year old Boris marries teen-aged Melodie.

But “Whatever Works” is only getting started. Melodie’s estranged mother and father — uptight, God-fearing Redstaters played by Ed Begley Jr. and Patricia Clarkson – are the next to arrive and fall under the spell of a Bohemian Manhattan. Before long, Allen’s ham-handed stereotypes give up the Jesus talk and silly country values for the promise of happiness found in divorce, ménage a trios and the long-repressed, inner homosexual.

Allen’s writing is shockingly lazy. The dialogue plays like something from a high school play with every on-the-nose scene stiffly performed as if over-rehearsed. The characters are worse; paper thin. Other than Rachel Wood, who summons more depth than the script deserves, the usually terrific Clarkson and Begley Jr. seem satisfied playing caricatures, which should come as no surprise. Hollywood bigots, never shy about granting terrorists, Nazis, rapists and child molesters some level of depth and dimension, refuse anything of the kind for us Wal-Mart shopping, Jesus-lovers.

With mixed results, the 74-year old Allen has used stand-ins before but David’s the worst — yes even worse than Kenneth Branagh. At least Branagh’s a talented film actor who brings something to the table above the script. Allen himself brings an unspoken pathos to these characters, even the narcissist in “Stardust Memories” and rank bastard in “Deconstructing Harry.” David only proves he’s a television actor, a sitcom guy, whose sitcom schtick never parts its own waters long enough to allow us a glimpse of the human being beneath Boris’s bile.

Not only is “Whatever Works” Allen’s worst film by a long shot, it’s an unrelentingly ugly thing that allows for a horrible, cruel and selfish man’s philosophy to win the day. In the past, even in Allen’s godless world, a consequence of some kind was meted out to these types, or at least a rotting of the soul was implied. But the man who did more than anyone to lampoon his own kind, those he famously described as the “New York, Jewish, Left-Wing, Liberal, Intellectual, Central Park West, Brandeis University, Socialist summer camps, and the father with the Ben Shahn drawings” crowd, appears to be devolving into something that lacks the self-awareness that once made him so unique.