KEY POINTS:
There's something faintly creepy about the relationship between Woody Allen and his new muse Scarlett Johansson, particularly when his camera caresses her body. It's like an old man boasting that he's still got it and demanding that we look. But the on-screen evidence is that he ain't got it.
The worst thing about his new picture is his presence as Sid Waterman, a dodgy Jewish stage magician who performs as the Great Splendini, but the film was always going to be lousy anyway.
Johansson plays student journalist Sondra Pronsky, on holiday in London, who is locked in a closet during Splendini's stage act where she meets the ghost of a recently deceased newshound (McShane). The reporter gives her the scoop of the century which he's overheard on a ferry across the Styx - that the smooth, handsome and ambitious Peter Lyman (Jackman) is actually a serial killer who has been terrorising the city.
This being the kind of tip-off unlikely to impress desk sergeants, Sondra decides to follow it up herself, and enlists the reluctant Sid. If you're still interested at this point, you may not be by the time the film is over, because you will have sat through a whole lot of tired one-liners that make Allen the comedian look like a dying bull, and endured a pastiche of a screwball 50s comedy that reminds you how good screwball 50s comedies used to be. Dire.
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Ian McShane, Hugh Jackman, Woody Allen
Director: Woody Allen
Running time: 96 mins
Rating: PG, contains sexual references
Screening: Rialto
Verdict: Woody Allen reprises his Alvy Singer shtick in a pastiche of 50s screwball that is deeply unfunny
