Amy Irving, Billy Crystal, Bob Balaban

Harry Block, despite the onset of middle age, has never really grown up. He has established a reputation as a novelist but has already spent his latest advance from his publisher without writing a wor...( read more  read more... )d of his latest book. He's had three wives and thinks he is sex-obsessed (having seen several therapists--one of whom he married--to analyze the problem). He is currently on his way to Adair College to receive a life achievement award but is nervous and needs company. Trouble is, Harry's latest girlfriend Fay has chosen this moment to marry his best friend Larry while another buddy, Richard, is having heart problems and can't make the trip. Finally, his wish to have his son Hilly see him honored are scuttled by his psychiatrist mother's refusal to let him attend the ceremony. Meanwhile, Lucy, Block's former sister in-law, is furious that Harry has, in his latest book, described, in vivid detail, their clandestine relationship.

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80% liked it

17,337 ratings

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69% liked it

32 critics

R, 1 hr. 33 min.

Directed by: Woody Allen

Release Date: December 12, 1997

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DVD Release Date: May 26, 1998

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Flixster Reviews (640)


  • March 21, 2009
    Burt: "Do you care even about the holocaust, or do you think it never happened?
    Harry Block: Not only do I know that we lost 6 million, but the scary thing is that records are made to be broken."


    Harry Block is a very cynical and jaded New York writer who has had a long an...( read more)d well received career as a writer of novels, many based on lightly veiled versions of his own life. Harry is going downhill fast, having alienated almost everyone he knows, by airing their dirty laundry in his books. Now he's a pill popping alcoholic, who has run out of things to say. He pretty much spends his time seeing his shrink, drinking, taking various prescription medications, and hanging out with hookers. Woody Allen is not the most ready figure that comes to mind when you think of prominent directors of fantastic cinema. The good news about Deconstructing Harry is that it is Woody Allen back on form and even returning somewhat to the heyday of still unsurpassed masterpiece Annie Hall to wind the old Allen neuroses into a kind of grandly existential self-inquisitorial on-screen psychodrama.
  • September 12, 2008
    The poorly balanced pedantry and disjointedness of this Woody Allen work can be pretty annoying; but some funny bits can compensate that.
  • April 20, 2008
    coulda been much better.. a little weak.
  • January 20, 2008
    One of Allen's most particularly funny films, which I guess isn't really saying much. Definitely his most foul-mouthed one to date. Lots and lots of brilliant dialogues and one-liners, as usual.
  • October 4, 2007
    Allen's last good movie, acid and with plenty of dark humour.
  • November 12, 2009
    Allen's best. His characteristical lack of structure and creativity slash madness have more sense here than in any other of his comedies. Also, it's his darkest and funniest.
  • October 20, 2009
    Woody Allen's wickedly funny masterpiece is as self-effacing - strike that; ego-obliterating - as they come. Allen stars as Harry Block, an aptly named and once moderately famous writer who now sits boozing in his Manhattan apartment, shifting the events and people of his life a...( read more)round under a microscope to see what "thinly-veiled" version of reality he can conjur up next for his "fiction;" a disgruntled ex refers to his "alchemy" and to him as "some f---in black magician." His problem is that he can't write. His life is a shambles: he has had multiple wives (including Kirstie Alley as a therapist who works out of their cramped apartment and Amy Irving as the cuckolded woman whose sister Harry woos into bed), a penchant for hookers, and far too many neuroses to mention. The plot, as it were, kicks in when Harry is told he's to be honored by his old alma-mater, who once expelled him, but his plans to attend are thwarted at every turn - he has nobody really to share the honor with, save for a young son (Eric Lloyd) who he kidnaps, an old friend who is poorly (Bob Balaban) and a kind, wisecracking black hooker named Cookie Williams (Hazelle Goodman). The road will be paved with many detours and visions, bittersweet memories and hilariously harsh confrontations; in this, Allen borrows somewhat from his idol Ingmar Bergman's "Wild Strawberries" (1957), which also featured an intellectual on his way to be honored and reflecting on his life. Woody Allen, who also wrote and directed, has crafted a wildly profane (you've never heard this much cursing; not even in "Bullets Over Broadway" or "Mighty Aphrodite"), sometimes dizzyingly kaleidoscopic vision of a self-loathing, narcissistic, sexist, vile sewer of a human being; just about everyone has a doppelganger. The film's style is to intercut snippets of Harry's many ill-fated relationships - including the affair he had with Irving's sister (a fantastic Judy Davis), now a gun-toting victim of heartbreak, and the sweet young student (Elisabeth Shue in reality, Jennifer Garner in fiction) who in turn broke Harry's heart - with bits from his various short stories and novels, as well as some of the moments from "reality" which inspired him in the first place. His fictions include everything from an "auto-biographical" thing about himself when he was young, married, sex-obsessed (portrayed by Tobey Maguire) and has an encounter that can best be described as ill-fated, to an actor (Robin Williams) who is out of focus and forces the world around him (including wife Julie Kavner and his kids and co-workers) to adjust to his "disability," as well as a not-so-subtle portrait of the destruction of his marriage to a "devout Jewish" therapist (he is Stanley Tucci, she is Demi Moore), and a mean-spirited, enraging slice of his affair with his sister-in-law (in fiction, she's Julia Louis-Dreyfus and he's "Mermaids" director Richard Benjamin). Allen throws in the kitchen sink, and then the whole kitchen: he even finds time for a brutally honest (and hilarious) excursion to the home of his ultra-Jewish half-sister (Caroline Aaron) and her zealot husband (Eric Bogosian), a darkly hilarious jab at his parents that features a Star Wars-themed bar mitzvah, the tale of an axe murderer and cannibalism, and that's even before an astonishingly designed sojurn into Hell to ask the Devil (Billy Crystal, who is also Harry's successful former best friend Larry) to give him back his young girlfriend (Shue). Because, as he finds, he cannot function in life but only in art, it is the excerpts from his work that are smooth and film-like, while the moments of reality are often fragmented, jump-cutting and full of slightly off-framed shots. Occasionally, Allen will begin a sentence, cut to another angle in the middle of another thought, and then back again to join the previous thought already in further progress. Sometimes, the film begins a camera move only to double back and start over; this reflects the fragmented nature of Harry's thought process. The results are sometimes a bit confusing at first, ambitious and admirably full of candor, and always hilarious. One of Allen's very best films!

    NOTE: That catchy song over the beginning and ending credits is "Twisted" by Annie Ross of "Short Cuts"-fame. The original screenplay was deservedly nominated for an Oscar.
  • October 9, 2009
    I want to see this just because of all the recognizable names...however...I don't remember the adds for this and I generally don't like Woody Allen.
  • September 26, 2009
    A lot of interesting lines particularly made me enjoy this film. Great cast too.
  • September 11, 2009
    Surreal and fantastic Woody project, splendid cast, hilarious moments, excellent script. Perhaps the most bizarre and unintentionally blasphemous Allen project.

    87/100

Comments


  • magnolia12883
    January 25, 2009
    AGREED! Just reviewed after rewatching for the umpteenth time; never gets old. A great film!
  • KLFilmmaker
    November 12, 2006
    This is one of Allen's best. Look out for this underated jem.

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Deconstructing Harry Trivia


  • Movie Star: That has been in all these films: Deconstructing Harry Fathers Day City Slickers Throw Momma From The Train Hamlet  Answer »
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