Match Point Review

by Ryan Ellis (flickershows AT hotmail DOT com)
June 3rd, 2007

Match Point (2005)
reviewed by Ryan Ellis
June 3, 2007

Some directors become such a brand name that their fans will show up to see every new film they release, no matter how much the director seems to have lost it or how irrelevant he might have become. That describes what it is to be a Woody Allen fan these days. As soon as Woody releases a new film, I'm there. Even though he hasn't made a great movie since Crimes And Misdemeanors way back in 1989 or even a memorably fun one like Bullets Over Broadway (which is more than 10 years old itself now), that's no reason not to believe that someone this smart can't still make a brilliant comedy...or even a brilliant drama. Not that he owes us anything anymore. He's made a half-dozen terrific pictures that can tide us over for all time. But advanced word was that Match Point (not a comedy at all, by the way, but a dead-serious thriller) was the Wood man's return to form.

Sadly, no. Match Point is a classy, English-made pile of disappointment. It takes a while to get going and then it takes forever to end. Hang on, back up a sec. It was made in England? Yes, Mister Manhattan shot the picture in and around London. So instead of Central Park or a street jammed with three-story brownstones, we get the Houses of Parliament and Notting Hill. The change of scenery and the proliferation of urbane accents can't erase the fact that this is just a rehash of Woody's own superior morality tale, the aforementioned Crimes And Misdemeanors. Or maybe Match Point is just Fatal Attraction without the boiling bunny. To go much further into the analogy would require a handful of spoilers, so let's save that for later.
The story begins with Chris Wilton (a board-flat Jonathan Rhys Meyers) giving tennis lessons to untalented amateurs. He was a pro at one time and for some reason he's living almost hand-to-mouth these days. After meeting the sister of one of his tennis students and mopily falling in love with her or her family's money or...something, he finds himself engaged to her and yet lusting for the tennis student's own fiancee. Now here's my first complaint---why cast an actress as likable and vivacious as Emily Mortimer to play Chloe the dutiful wife, then turn her into a nagging dud who doesn't have Clue #1 that her hubby is stepping out on her?

The object of Chris' affections (and the objectified target of Woody's camera) is named Nola and she's played by the smokey-voiced Scarlett Johansson. As sexy as this young woman is, she's not up to this kind of role just yet. Then again, all she has to do is spend the first half of the movie fighting off Meyer's advances and the second half fucking his brains out (while harping that he has to leave his wife). It's a tricky character, though, even if Woody hadn't been so unfair to the character. Johansson seems to get lost in the material. She's too youthful to pull off the Sharon Stone I'm-here-if-you're-man-enough-to-take-me scenes in the early going and then comes off as just another jilted lover later on. Nola is worth any of this trouble, glorious mams or not.

Chris agrees with that sentiment...eventually. Okay, let's get into some spoilers now. Chris is not in love with Chloe, but he loves the fancy houses and the money provided by the cushy job his father-in-law got for him, so he's staying married. Nola (reminding us of a whinier version of Anjelica Huston) demands that the sham marriage end and he live up to his responsibilities as a father-to-be. The bugaboo is that he's made the wrong woman pregnant and the mistress wants to keep both the baby and him. So he sets a plan in motion to whack her. This is where the movie finally gains momentum. Woody has never been Hitchcockian before and he handles the climax with exceeding competence. The movie finally shows signs of life in the final half hour. Even though there are some horrible things going on, we're forced to put in with Chris...even though he clearly doesn't deserve our support.

Now, the aftermath of the Anjelica Huston murder in Crimes And Misdemeanors was the point of the story and Woody found a graceful way to show how Martin Landau could rationalize his way out of his moral crisis. That movie ended right when it should have. The protracted finale in Match Point is fascinating, yet it drags the whole thing down. Once the inquisitive cops turn up, the whole thing almost turns into an episode of CSI. Everything needs to be there and yet it takes far too long to get to the end credits. That's typical for this overlong film, though. Alisa Lepselter's editing is consistently deadening and it's got absolutely no snap or crackle.

The cast is certainly trying, but they've been left twisting in the breeze. Brian Cox, one of the most commanding actors when given a meaty role, has essentially nothing to do. Still, if the only thing Cox gets to play is the dutiful dad to Emily Mortimer and Matthew Goode, Penelope Wilton (who was so funny as Shaun's mum in Shaun Of The Dead) is burdened with being the dull-as-a-dog's-ass mother. She never liked Nola and she seems to love Chris. [If she only knew.] Not that this is the first time or 101st time that good actors have gone to waste, yet there's something especially head-shaking here. Cox doesn't even have one of those "I'm rich, so don't hurt my little girl or I keel you, bub" conversations with his son-in-law. He would have completely owned a scene like that.

However, the biggest problem has nothing to do with the supporting cast. The young leads just don't seem to be up to the job of bringing this pony home. Meyers has been in more than 20 movies and he's been memorable in exactly zero of them. Even though he's the star here, he barely registers. He's playing a cold-hearted wimp, one of those tortured adulterers that male actors play so often. The way his character is written, he's hardly worth any of the fuss Scarlett Johansson puts up over him (and vice versa, for that matter). Johansson & Meyers are in lust and they sure do seem to like knocking boots. They just don't have the chemistry to shoot off the sparks we're supposed to see rocketing out of their pants.

At least the cinematography (not by Woody regulars Fei Zhao or Sven Nykvist this time, but by Remi Adefarasin) and the set design are as rich & classy as in any Woody production. The movie isn't a snooze either because Allen is too intelligent to spend 2 hours boring us. Actually, he would have been a perfect director for the studio era in the '30s or '40s. He writes smart scripts. He places his cast in the midst of pretty sets and upscale locales. The characters are shallow and narcissistic. He doesn't usually resort to four-letter wording. His budgets don't run very high. And best of all, if he'd worked 60 or 70 years ago, he wouldn't be repeating himself in 2005.
It's odd that Woody's Oscar nomination would come in the Original Screenplay category because there's very little originality in it. He's pillaging his own 1989 tragi-comedy and probably 3 or 4 other---better---films. Not many people agree with me on that point. Maybe they so badly need to believe that Match Point is a return to prominence that they unjustly praised this trite little morality tale. It's a left turn from the recent slate of inconsequential (and barely funny) comedies Woody Allen had been making. It just doesn't live up to what he can do if he really sets his mind to it. Re-serve, Woody.

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