Whatever Works

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Whatever Works

64% Liked It
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Whatever Works

Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood, Henry Cavill, Patricia Clarkson, Ed Begley Jr

An eccentric New Yorker (Larry David) abandons his upper class life to lead a more bohemian existence. He meets a young girl from the south and her family, and no two people seem to get along in the e...( read more  read more... )ntanglements that follow.

Id: 11020034

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Whatever Works Recent Reviews
  • ceWEBrity
    December 26, 2009
    ceWEBrity
    Clever though Woody Allen may be, I still can't get over the fact that most of his films are just thin justifications for manipulating, brainwashing and then fucking girls a third of his age. In Whatever Works he just returns to the same well, to an almost disturbing extent. Not ...( read more)even someone as dim as Evan Rachel Wood's Melody would tolerate - hell, straight up ignore - the insane abuse that Larry David heaps upon her. No, instead, she marries him. Or rather he marries her after he's learned that she's adopted some of his ways of thinking. And though Whatever Works tries to cash in some late-game sympathy for Boris and refute his stunning intellectual grasp of the human condition, it's too little too late. He is more or less insufferable, to the point where you cannot be bothered to even laugh at his sporadically amusing lines. (In a rather sick turnaround, it's Wood who scores most of the laughs here, though even those are about nine or ten in number.) Allen's failure to create some sort of lovable misanthrope is undermined both by the constant obsession with and recycling of the genius hypochondriac protagonist, and with the viewer's knowledge that such a smart character should have immediately realized the error of his ways. More disturbing still is ones of the film's implicit agreements with Boris, in that everyone is living a repressed and oversimplified life - to suggest that even one aspect of this character's poisonous thinking is correct, or at least that it applies to all people, is to give him far too much credit. Eh, fuck it. In the end this all boils down to more of Allen's self-flagellating of the not-so-secretly miserable life of a typical New York academic, and at this point I don't really care what he has to say on the subject. All these films just seem like a collection of creepy old men dating young women who are inexplicably attracted to them but everyone's unhappy about it anyway; though they offer some fitful out of context insights, they are by and large the same things repeated over and over to diminishing returns.
  • rebvodka042099
    December 12, 2009
    rebvodka042099
    For everyone who knows my movie tastes well enough, they'll know that Woody Allen isn't a director I'd list amongst the ones I admire - maybe because I have great difficulty separating his private life from his movie-making one.

    I haven't seen a good Woody Allen film in years - ...( read more)decades! After The curse of the Jade Scorpio he's on a constant decline. And he knows so. Thus, he digs up a script he wrote 30 years ago and serves it to us. It's not funny, not particularly interesting, and it only chews over what we've been seeing from Woody Allen since he knew how to make movies.

    There were a few good lines, smart storyline, but it's a movie I'd expect to see from practically any director - because it was THAT easy to make. The characters were indifferent, the ending was sappy, and overall - if we force it - it was mildly enjoyable.
  • franktowers
    December 10, 2009
    franktowers
    adorable fun movie, does drag a little
  • sykora259517
    November 25, 2009
    sykora259517
    (w/ Henry. Cavil & OMG he gets to keep his accent in it!! grrrowl)- Ok not sur eif anyone else would find is funny. But this is suppose to be a rom-com (romantic comedy) Well Henry is not in it much. There?s parts that I wish moved a long a bit faster. Oh yeah & if the Old guy wa...( read more)s suppose to be female then I should have those lines! Cause ½ the crap the guy says sounds like me. (or maybe ¼ of it) my 1st NETFLIX movie !! So I?ll let ya?s know in a month or 2 how I like it. Tehre were a few parts that I thought were funny, not hilarious funny but ok. Its more of a Relax movie than anything. C
  • sononothing
    November 14, 2009
    sononothing
    Whatever Works follows the life of Boris Yellnikoff (Larry David), a genius physicist who blows all that stuff off to teach kids how to play chess and spread the good will of his philosophy to the masses. Cynical to the extreme. One night while returning to his ram shackled apart...( read more)ment he stumbles on a Southern teenager living on the streets named Melodie (Evan Rachel Wood), who Boris reluctantly helps and develops into a disciple of his own Borisology. Of course, the two end up falling in love and getting married with the most shocked party being Boris himself. The problems arise when Boris' new in-laws that are obviously of the red state mentality are thrust into the way of life in NYC- and make Boris' life a living hell.

    Whatever Works represents a turning point in Woody Allen's career. The film breathes like some of his best stuff from the '70's and '80's, but he's realized one important fact- he is too old to play himself anymore. Boris is so blatantly Allen that it should be announced before the film that "the role usually reserved for Woody Allen will tonight be played by Larry David. You can obviously hear these lines come from Woody Allen's mouth ten or fifteen years ago. Larry David fills in fine and seems to know when to let his inner Woody come out and when to pull a Costanza.

    The rest of the cast is very good with Wood playing the naive southern belle up for all its worth, giving a comedic turn that I haven't seen from her. Patricia Clarkson plays Melodie's mother who succumbs to the "hedonism" of New York City and instead of making dinners for her husband (an awesome Ed Begley, Jr.) decides to become a photographer and enter into a relationship where she lives with two men. That damn NYC!

    Whatever Works is a Woody Allen movie. love him or hate him, he makes a good movie here or there. This isn't one of his greatest films, but it's definitely not one of the worst and has some very funny moments, usually coming from Boris' mouth. Being your typical Allen movie the characters go through a series of hellish, obscure, defining events, but in the end there's a moral to the story that you can either take with you or send off to neuron oblivion.
  • astatementofnoise
    January 1, 2010
    astatementofnoise
    Larry David plays a Woody Allen-type character (Boris Yellnikoff) in Mr. Königsberg's last film. He's rude, misanthrope, sarcastic and bitter. Evan Rachel Wood is Melody, a simple idiotic girl from the south who ends up in Boris' New York apartment. Their lives change from that m...( read more)oment on.

    The movie deals with Woody's current subjects (life, existence, love, death and human relationships) so it's kinda hard to find something remarkable. The script has marvelous dialogue lines and Larry David does a great job keeping in mind he is more a writer than an actor. Patricia Clarkson, Michael McKean and Henry Cavill appear too.
  • dukeakasmudge
    January 1, 2010
    dukeakasmudge
    Im a big fan of Larry David so I REALLY expected to like this movie but it stunk.I guess I shouldve expected that after it was directed by Woody Allen
  • dynamitedon1
    December 31, 2009
    dynamitedon1
    not my type of movie
  • kriswhite08
    December 31, 2009
    kriswhite08
    I thought this was funny and the characters are all too real...
  • DutchCrow
    December 30, 2009
    DutchCrow
    Another movie dealing with a relationship between a young girl and a much older man, just like Manhattan. You don't know what to expect with Woody Allen, but this one turned out to be an enjoyable movie. Two of the biggest names in black comedy combined results in a bit of a cyni...( read more)cal humor overdose, but I could live with that.
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