But as the movie progresses, he gets little telling glimpses of the effect he has on others, and how this has helped make him so unhappy. Will he change...doubtful. But at the end, we feel like maybe we've gotten a fairly unsugarcoated look at how Woody Allen really feels about himself, his art and the women in his life.
The movie is really, really funny. It's extremely foul-mouthed (do not let kids near it...it makes Mira Sorvino in MIGHTY APHRODITE seem quite tame). You also get to see some familiar actors doing some pretty down and dirty things...Julia Louis Dreyfuss in a rather explicit scene with Richard Benjamin...that alone is an eye-brow raiser. The normally sweet Tobey Maguire is a sex-crazed younger version of Allen...to comic effect. Judy Davis (one of the best actresses anywhere, period) is funny as a pistol-wielding former lover of Allen's, spouting intelligent (and extremely obscene) insults at him, while slowly coming unglued.
We see a number of Allen's character's short stories acted out, and those are often amusing little ditties, although the one with the old Jewish couple is just silly. Another one with Robin Williams (as a man who is becoming "unfocused") is very amusing.
One excellent scene has Allen surprising his sister with a visit while he's on a drive to upstate New York to get an award. She's married to a very conservative Jewish man, and has really turned her life over to a life some might call zealot-like (certainly Allen does). The pain of Allen's and his sister's relationship is palpable...there's real pain on both sides...and real love. Something we don't see often in Allen's glib, cynical world.
The cast is unformly great (with one exception...in a moment). Allen, Davis, Dreyfuss, etc. Robin Williams makes a brief, amusing appearance, along with Julie Kavner. Imagine those two married!! Demi Moore, in a tiny part, is tolerable, and Billy Crystal is amusing as the Devil (yep, Allen's character goes to hell towards the end, and the conception of hell is pretty funny and pretty elaborate for a Woody Allen movie).
The exception to all the praise is Elizabeth Shue. I'm sorry, but she seemed to have spent all her talent with LEAVING LAS VEGAS. She is simply terrible in this film (and others, like THE HOLLOW MAN & COUSIN BETTE), playing the part of Allen's current love interest. Seeing Allen with all these young beautiful women in movie after movie is always hard...but they usually come across as intelligent and perhaps it is the shared intelligence that Allen and these young beauties have that make their relationships tolerable. Shue, on the other hand, comes across as vacuous. She almost looks like she's reading cue cards. The few scenes she is in totally grind the movie to a halt.
But, that flaw aside, see this movie if you like Woody Allen, and frankly, maybe if you don't like him. He might agree with you!
This is a story about a seriously [messed up] writer that transposes it's way between reality, the writer's stories - frequently comedic and very funny - and balancing these elements into an easy to watch, mostly satisfying film.
The character, Harry is a thinly veiled version of Woody Allen although at this point there are so many films Allen has made that contain his own experience the only thing that's different here is the intense level of hostility which actually makes for good contrast to the comedic segments.
Typical themes of a Woody Allen film are here; self-loathing and the artist as incapable of having relationships with women that don't implode along with a new vigor for more explicit sexual themes and language. Once more Allen plays the anti-jew - at times he appears to have borrowed that character, if not part of the Harry character from Philip Roth's fiction.
There's also lots of guilt, being a questionable parent, in-jokes about critics and media....it just goes on and on. And that is why I like Deconstructing Harry. Even though we've heard it before Woody Allen manages to develop the formula to a darker depth and uglier person. Harry/Allen is not a nice schmoe that anyone could find adorable as in many previous films. The 'self realization' ending rings false in the context of this otherwise well written and acted film. It is worth mentioning in his films after this one he is indeed more relaxed and mostly back to whimsical comedies. So perhaps there's truth to the ending's 'accepting your problems and moving on' theme.
This is about as negative a film as 'Stardust Memories' which Deconstructing Harry feels like an update of.
