"Whatever Works" simply works

“Whatever Works”
STARRING: Larry David, Patricia Clarkson, Evan Rachel Wood
DIRECTED BY: Woody Allen
RATED: PG-13
SHOWING: Lagoon Cinema, 1320 Lagoon Ave.

Can Larry David escape the bonds of “Larry David,” the beloved curmudgeon of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and create a new, believable character that possesses many of the same characteristics? Can a Woody Allen film possibly go against traditional grain and have said older man NOT end up with a gorgeous young girl? Can a Woody Allen film always be summed up in rhetorical questions and a rapid-fire barrage of wordiness? Read on to find out.
In the movie, Wood plays Melodie St. Ann Celestine , a super naïve Mississippi girl who runs away to New York City after being caught “fornicating” with a classmate in her über religious hometown. Luckily she encounters the Allen stand-in, Boris (David), who constantly talks down to her, insults her intelligence and inexplicably makes her fall in love with him, neuroses and all. Classic Allen for the masses, once again.
And, in fact, “Whatever Works” is essentially a blast from the past, only barely updated for today. The script was written by Allen in his ’70s heyday, but when his top choice to play Boris, comedian Zero Mostel, died, Woody threw the project aside, not dusting it off until now. Luckily, despite finding itself in a changed cultural climate, it retains much of its original freshness and charm.
If Allen would’ve appeared alongside David (since he seems to like to star in his own flicks), the screen would have exploded from all the zippy dialogue, anxious nebbishness, hypochondria and constant chatter that Allen has helped trademark as Jewish humor. Boris sleeps with a light on because of nightmares, constantly fears the day he’ll die and has a tendency to jump out the window when the going gets tough.
It’s a good thing Woody doesn’t show up, because David fares better as the cantankerous, supposed genius whose Bohemian New York existence is interrupted by Melodie, and later her family, who show up after a year in search of their M.I.A. daughter.
While Wood is luminous and cheerfully charming as Melodie, and David is, well, Larry David as Boris, it’s Melodie’s parents — particularly Patricia Clarkson as Marietta — who steal the show. With a Southern-fried accent and newfound penchant for threesomes, Clarkson’s Marietta finds an artistic passion she’s stifled as a good Christian wife and soaks the screen with a honeyed sexiness. Though Clarkson is often seen in dramatic roles, she’s a comedienne of the highest order — a Carole Lombard in a hippie headscarf. And let’s just say that Melodie’s conservative, NRA member daddy, played by Ed Begley Jr., gives into a homoerotic desire he’s been harboring since his days on the high school football team.
Though Boris is prone (like any Woody Allen hero) to whining about the end of the world and the demise of society, calling everyone of lesser intelligence “cretins” and “inchworms,” “Whatever Works” is no droning, grating movie-watching experience. In fact, it’s the complete opposite; 92 minutes fly by in a delicious haze of fun.
David breaks the fourth wall and talks to the audience (a Woody trademark) and, yeah, that really only worked in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” but it’s the easiest way to get inside the character’s head.
Allen and his cast pack a lot of words into one conversation, so you have to pay attention. Luckily, the movie is such a delight, from its swoony sentimental soundtrack to its happy-in-spite-of-itself ending, that monumental task seems easy.
“People make life so much worse than it has to be,” pontificates Boris in one diatribe to his audience. And that’s the heart of “Whatever Works,” really. Do what makes you happy, and tell people just exactly how you feel — it’s worked for Allen, and it works just fine in “Whatever Works.”