Scoop

Posted by Matthew Alexander (matthew@filmschoolrejects.com) on August 31, 2006

Release Date: July 28, 2006

Returning to the location of his last successful endeavor - London, England - Woody Allen has followed the tense and dark drama of Match Point with the lighter and more comedic Scoop. Many of the same elements are present, such as Scarlett Johansson - who this time plays the lead role of Sondra Pransky - the upper class British elite and use of classical music for the score, but the effect is quite different this time.

Scoop opens with a funeral service for one Joe Strombel (Ian McShane), a newspaper reporter who, we learn from his colleagues’ conversations, had quite the nose for a story. Next, we are taken to the ferry that is transporting Joe’s soul into Hades. One of the other spirits in transport is that of a young woman who believes she was poisoned. Having stumbled across the identity of the Tarot Card Killer, a serial murderer currently terrorizing prostitutes with short brunette hair in London, she was poisoned by that very killer, her boss Peter Lyman (played by Hugh Jackman).

Joe decides to jump into what we presume is the river Styx and swim back to the mortal plane to give the scoop to another reporter, any reporter. The one he finds is Sondra Pransky, a young journalism student who has decided not to follow in the family tradition of dentistry and oral hygiene. He finds her while she is onstage inside a magician’s dematerialization box, having volunteered to participate in a magic trick performed by Sid Waterman, played by Woody Allen himself. In the box, Joe gives her the information he has and then fades back into the spirit world.

The next day, Sondra comes back to see Sid and tries to explain what happened, but Sid is incredulous. However, when Joe appears for him too the stage magician swiftly converts and the two then hatch a plan to find this Peter Lyman and prove he is the Tarot Card Killer.

The film is the kind of far fetched that only a comedy can get away with, but in being a comedy the implausibility becomes charming. The quirky conceit is a good match for the equally quirky roles played by Woody Allen and Scarlett Johansson. The story, though often seeming to be less of a priority than the one-liners and character interaction, is sound enough to serve as a stage for Woody Allen to let fly with his famous humor. For example, when asked what his religious persuasion is, he replies, “I was born of the Hebrew persuasion but I later converted to Narcissism.”

The occasional chuckle that Allen provides and the very mildly entertaining tale is about all that the movie has to offer. Woody Allen really does not have any style as a director. His shots are static, predictable and ordinary, giving an editor very little to work with. Like a stage performance, it is the actors themselves that must carry the drama; the audience’s perspective is always the same. Only a little more attention is given to the camera than to set it on a tripod; just a bit more deliberation is given to the lights than to switch them on so the actors can be photographed. And with Scoop Woody Allen continues his trend of using classical music in places where it does not always fit, though the music works better in Scoop than in Match Point.

Another impediment that prevents the film from even approaching a high place in the pantheon of comedies is that Woody Allen, as usual the screenwriter for the movie, is simply not very adept at raising the stakes and building an increasingly frenetic pace that brings us to a wild third act and a satisfying conclusion. He’s certainly not incompetent: Scoop has a solid and understandable structure with no glaring blunders. It runs smoothly enough. But it just never reaches the sublime heights that a movie like A Fish Called Wanda does.

The conceit is interesting, but the actual story is more ordinary. The characters are funny, but the director does little to help them out. The lines are clever, but the scenes do not build off each other. In short, it is a typical Woody Allen film: solid enough in the usual aspects but weak where Woody Allen films are always weak. It would be generous to say the movie was very good, but it would be miserly to say that it was bad. It’s mildly entertaining if your hopes are not set too high, and with not too much coming out this year, at least so far, it’s as good a choice as any other film right now.

Final Grade: C

The Upside: Allen has some funny moments and everyone is entertained by a mystery in the process of being solved.

The Downside: Allen is not much of a director and, though he has an imagination, he is not much more than an ordinary screenwriter.

On the Side: In forty one years, since 1966, Woody Allen has directed forty one projects. Next year his forty second is due to be released.

Read more articles by Matthew Alexander