MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1993 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Diane Keaton, Woody Allen, Alan Alda, Anjelica Huston. Screenplay: Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman. Director: Woody Allen.
Reviewing a Woody Allen film is a lot like reviewing a sushi restaurant. You have to keep in mind that a significant portion of your audience is going to tune out because sushi just isn't their taste. Whether it's good sushi or bad sushi becomes irrelevant; the fact that it's sushi is all that matters.
At the risk of hammering this particular metaphor into the ground, MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY is good sushi. Not great, but good. While it lacks the emotional scope that made HANNAH AND HER SISTERS and MANHATTAN such great films, MANATTAN MURDER MYSTERY is by any standard a thoroughly enjoyable entertainment. It's easily Allen's funniest film since HANNAH, and perhaps since ANNIE HALL.
Larry (Woody Allen) and his wife Carol (Diane Keaton) are a married couple who, after twenty plus years, have settled into a rather mundane routine. She reluctantly goes to hockey games with him, he in turn grudgingly joins her at the opera. It's always business as usual with little spark, until an elderly neighbor in their apartment building is found dead of an apparent heart attack. Carol becomes suspicious when the woman's husband (Jerry Adler) acts a bit too nonchalant, and begins to uncover clues which she believes point to foul play. Larry is convince Carol is imagining things, causing her to turn to a recently divorced friend, Ted (Alan Alda), for comfort. Larry, meanwhile, is flattered by the attentions of a writer (Anjelica Huston), and frustrated by Carol's insistence that she crack the case.
MURDER MYSTERY sets up a parallel between Carol's investigation and the search for some remaining zing in her marriage. Larry is a man who wants little more than a good night's sleep; Carol wants something more before it's too late. When Ted, who has had a longtime crush on Carol, shares her enthusiasm for the chase, she begins to think about what could be. These moments, when MURDER MYSTERY focuses on relationships, seem to be the weak points. This is a surprise given Allen's talent for examining relationships, but his heart here seems more squarely in the comedy.
Those who remember the classic physical comedy of SLEEPER and EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX will be thrilled by Allen's return to his roots. Certainly, the moments are more sublime than those early films, but it's the same old Woody with the flare for choreographed ineptitude. He has some great moments bumbling through the suspected neighbor's apartment, and a priceless sequence when he loses complete control of a cassette tape. Nearly as deft is Diane Keaton, reteamed with Allen for the first time in nearly fifteen years. Keaton, for now infamous reasons, replaced Mia Farrow in the role, and it's hard to visualize Farrow as Carol. Over the years Farrow had become more and more like some parody of a female Woody Allen, and her manner of perpetually whining would have been completely inappropriate for the confident and focused Carol. Keaton is an engaging and intelligent screen presence, too often relegated in recent years to window dressing roles like Steve Martin's wife in the recent remake of FATHER OF THE BRIDE. It's a pleasure to see her in a well-written role, and investing it with real energy.
Technical credits, typical for an Allen film, are first rate. The cinematography by Carol DiPalma is handsome as usual; the jittery verite camera style, which was used to stomach-churning excess in HUSBANDS AND WIVES, is thankfully toned-down. And as usual, there is the score of jazz classics, most notable "Sing Sing Sing" used to highlight the chase scenes.
The scenes which highlight Allen and Keaton together crackle with the comic intensity that characterized their 70's pairing; in fact, those scenes are so funny and so lively that the moments when they're not on screen together suffer by comparison. There are a few dead spots in MURDER MYSTERY, mostly those featuring an excessively deadpan Alda, but they are far outnumbered by the laughs. MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY is diverting, intelligent comedy that kept a smile on my face for nearly two hours.
Then again, I also love sushi.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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