Woody Allen's screwball slapstick comedy hits with effortless wit

By Marshall Fine
The (Westchester, N.Y.) Journal News

HOLLYWOOD ENDING (Rated PG-13 for profanity, partial nudity, sexuality, slapstick violence.) Four stars. (Excellent). A washed-up director, hired by his ex-wife to make a major film, finds himself coping with a psychosomatic affliction that may affect his ability to shoot the film in this funny, observant comedy about relationships in the film industry. Starring Woody Allen, Tea Leoni, Treat Williams, Debra Messing, Mark Rydell. Directed by Woody Allen. DreamWorks Pictures. 104 minutes.

Even as he puts together a deft screwball comedy about former married partners thrown together in a new endeavor, Allen pokes delicious fun at the movie industry and its inhabitants: "The price of his haircut could feed a family of five," Allen observes about a studio head at one point.

Allen plays Val Waxman, a one-time Oscar-winning director who has hit a 10-year career lull, during which his reputation as a neurotic perfectionist hypochondriac has only grown. Still, he's exactly right to direct a hot script called "The City That Never Sleeps" at Galaxy Pictures, a hot studio.

But there's one problem: The film's producer, Ellie (Tea Leoni), is Val's ex-wife. She left him for Hal (Treat Williams), now head of Galaxy Pictures, to whom she's engaged.

Ellie still believes in Val enough to silence qualms about Val directing the film from Hal and everyone else. Val is even able to cast his ditzy off-Broadway girlfriend Lori (Debra Messing) in a small role.

The TV ads and trailers for "Hollywood Ending" give away the film's central gag. If you don't already know it, skip the next couple of paragraphs — and avoid the commercials.

The night before he is supposed to start shooting the film, Val develops psychosomatic blindness. He calls his agent, Al (the wonderful Mark Rydell), who convinces Val that he should try to bluff his way through the film without mentioning his blindness, in hopes that he will regain his sight in time to do the film right.

Val isn't sure he should listen to Al: "You have agent's ethics — I can't go by you," Val says. Still, he sees no other way out. So the rest of the film is built around this premise, with an imaginative array of slapstick sight gags, as well as verbal wit. The funniest lines go to Barney Cheng as the young NYU student serving as translator for Val's Chinese cinematographer, who is pressed into nonplussed service as Val's confidante and shadow.

Allen works wonderful variations on Val's condition. He has great fun with the idea that anyone who's been hired to direct a major motion picture must know what he's doing, even when it seems completely crazy. There are plenty of movies that look as though they are the work of people in much worse shape than Val Waxman.

Allen might be a limited actor but, within those limits, there's no one funnier. His wisecracks and complaints spin effortlessly, even in throwaway jokes (like someone sending flowers to congratulate Haley Joel Osment on a career achievement award). Allen also has a strong sense of physical comedy, capturing the illusion of this character's affliction in ways that are consistently surprising.

He draws terrific performances from Tea Leoni and Debra Messing; one wishes the gifted Leoni had more slapstick to deal with but she captures the sense of panic and frantic desperation of her character, while Messing makes blank self-absorption very funny indeed. Treat Williams has the hale imperviousness of a mover and shaker and serves as a perfect straight man in one of the film's funniest scenes of physical humor.

This is Allen's third pure comedy in a row. As amusing as "Small Time Crooks" and "Curse of the Jade Scorpion" were, "Hollywood Ending" far outstrips them. It's almost as if Allen needed to reconnect with that comic impulse and has once again hit his stride with this, his funniest movie since "Bullets Over Broadway."

Rated PG-13 for profanity, partial nudity, sexuality, slapstick violence.