Deconstructing Harry Review
by Scott Renshaw (renshaw AT inconnect DOT com)January 6th, 1998
DECONSTRUCTING HARRY
(Fine Line)
Starring: Woody Allen, Hazelle Goodman, Bob Balaban, Kirstie Alley, Judy Davis, Elisabeth Shue, Billy Crystal.
Screenplay: Woody Allen.
Producer: Jean Doumanian.
Director: Woody Allen.
MPAA Rating: R (profanity, sexual situations, nudity, adult themes) Running Time: 95 minutes.
Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Woody Allen spends 95 minutes blurring the lines between life and art in DECONSTRUCTING HARRY. Allen plays Harry Block, a loathsome little worm of a successful writer who turns his misery and philandering into the subjects for his stories. Understandably, this becomes a sore point for the ex-wives and ex-lovers who populate his work as thinly-disguised analogs; it's bad enough dealing with harry in real life without being subjected to further indignities in fictional form. Throughout the film, we get a chance to see Harry's autobiographical tales brought to life, with different actors playing the roles of various individuals in his life -- Julia Louis-Dreyfuss as one-time lover Judy Davis, Demi Moore as second wife Kirstie Alley, and so on.
It's a fairly successful conceit, one which allows Allen to take off on some extremely funny flights of fancy. Robin Williams has a neat cameo as an actor having trouble getting focused (literally), while an elevator trip to hell becomes an opportunity to tear into occupations worthy of a special place among the damned ("the media," "lawyers who appear on television"). Allen has plenty of fun with the narrative device, but that same device also points out one major casting problem in DECONSTRUCTING HARRY: with all the surrogate role-playing going on, Allen should have found someone else to play Harry Block.
In part, it's because the levels of self-referentiality become wearying. Allen is playing himself in a semi-autobiographical story about a writer who writes semi-autobiographical stories in which he sometimes plays himself, and so on to infinity like some double-mirror effect. More to the point, Allen isn't deft enough as an actor -- or ego-less enough as a director -- to make Harry truly repugnant. In order for us to take DECONSTRUCTING HARRY seriously as Allen's acknowledgement that art does not forgive all, Harry needs to be more than a pathetic little nebbish. Another actor might have given Harry's misogynistic rantings and rationalizations genuine bite; Allen's desperate need to be accepted and understood bathes his every moment on screen in apologetic blandness.
Of course, it's just as easy to read DECONSTRUCTING HARRY as Allen's argument that art _does_ forgive all. And in some ways, the film is its own best argument, teasing the audience with goofy entertainment whenever it's not making half-hearted attempts to dig into Harry's psyche. Perhaps it does matter to some viewers whether or not allen is a horrible human being with a morally reprehensible personal life. Me, I'll settle for being treated to a bunch of laughs once a year. Unfortunately, Allen has been spending most of the last several years using his films as feature length p.r. announcements for himself. DECONSTRUCTING HARRY is as effective in its comedy as it is distracting in its self-absorption, blurring the line between life and art just enough to make you wish Allen could blur it a bit more.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 deconstruction sites: 6.
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