January 1–8, 1998

movie shorts

Deconstructing Harry

recommended

Woody Allen plays Harry Block, a critically successful but romantically disastrous novelist whose many ex-girlfriends inevitably end up furious with him when they become fodder for his thinly veiled autobiographical novels. Hmmm, sound like a certain filmmaker we know? Deconstructing Harry takes a step back from the incessantly crowd-pleasing Woodies of late to tell the best story Allen's come up with since 1991's Husbands and Wives. Yes, it's one of "the funny ones," but it's also a slyly layered shell game which conceals as much as it reveals. After one of Harry's exes (Judy Davis) nearly shoots him in a fit of rage, Harry plunges into a belated midlife crisis and eventually decides to come clean, dropping the pretense that his work is wholly fictional. The liberal use of profanity and sexually explicit dialogue—both firsts for Allen—are probably meant to seem daring, but although there are few pleasures in life greater than hearing a fighting-mad Judy Davis wrap her sandpaper tonsils around the word "motherfucker," such superficial taboo-breaking doesn't really amount to much. Still, Deconstructing Harry is the loosest, giddiest film Woody Allen has made in decades, and for once the mirth seems genuine and not merely designed to win back a public whom Allen feels has turned against him.

—Sam Adams