ViewGuide

Created Sep 22, 2008 02:38AM PST • Edited Nov 05, 2018 08:52PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Very Good 3.5

   More droll drama than pure comedy, VCB is nonetheless plenty amusing, even generating a couple of low-key LOL moments, like a racy Prairie Home Companion for the urbane.

   Though sleek and understated, this remains a classic Woody Allen film, full of high-toned people cavorting in Architectural Digest settings while talking cleverly – and endlessly – about love, desire and the troublesome bonds of commitment. Now in his late period, the bespectacled little neurotic has dropped himself from the picture, but his adolescently romantic worldview remains firmly in place.

4. Acting

   Very Good 3.5

   Javier Bardem’s suave artiste character serves as yet another Woody Allen alter-ego, the creative giant whose greatness affords freedom from sexual strictures. Woody himself has played this role on-screen and in real life. Here he gets a bona fide hunk to mouth his lines and caress his women.

   Happily, the woman are particularly interesting, especially Penelope Cruz’s tempestuous soul mate character. Every bit the equal of Bardem’s character, she gives the movie a fierce femininity that women as well as men will no doubt find attractive.

   The rest of the typically large cast are more than competent, though I continue to find Scarlett Johansson undeserving of her screen siren status. Pedestrian in acting, neither is she as beautiful as her airs suggest.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Very Good 3.5

    Woody’s movies tend to be strongly rooted in place: New York City for the longest time, London more recently. Now he gives us Barcelona: sophisticated, intriguing, romantic and looming large enough in the structure of the movie to warrant its name in the title.

11. Direction Very Good 3.5

12. Play Very Good 3.5

13. Music Great 4.0

    Spanish guitar lovers, your movie is here.

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5

    Ah, Catalonia, earthy yet sophisticated, unspoiled yet cosmopolitan, at least as Woody’s camera would have it. His celebration of the architecture of Antoni Gaudí­ forms an extended highlight.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.8

17. Sex Titillating 2.4

18. Violence Gentle 1.4

19. Rudeness Salty 1.7

21. Reality

    Glib 1.1

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.4

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0