Anything Else
Woody Allen

Dolan Cummings

Anything Else is a film about infatuation, the mistaken belief that anything is any more than anything else. If there is something cynical in the escapism of the average romantic comedy, the cynicism of this film is all the more brutal for its apparent honesty.

Woody Allen plays Dobel, a New York schoolteacher with survivalist tendencies, who befriends aspiring writer Falk (Jason Biggs) while both are trying to make it writing jokes for comedians. The older man quickly becomes a mentor to the 'kid', though he has little to offer but the wisdom that comes with failure, while the 21-year-old Falk is already divorced and in therapy, and worldly enough to look good in a sports jacket.

During their walks in a beautifully-filmed New York, they discuss Falk's problems with his dysfunctional girlfriend. Christina Ricci is wonderfully seductive as the infuriating Amanda. I shared Falk's infatuation for a good 25 minutes before deciding that wanting to sleep with a woman and wanting to hit her aren't really the same thing after all. Pretty soon it becomes clear that it is Falk's self-confessed fear of sleeping alone, rather than any quality of Amanda's, that keeps the relationship going.

Hence, the romcom trope of the delightfully cooky girl turning the square guy's world upside-down is subverted, and the viewer can only watch in horror till Falk shakes off his delusion with the help of Dobel. At times, Jason Biggs really does seem like a young Woody Allen, never more so than when Falk is desperately trying to persuade Amanda to have sex with him after six months of neurotic abstinence. She asks if he really just wants her to lie there rigid while he does it to her. 'It's getting to the stage where I would settle for that,' he answers candidly.

It's not a profound movie, and its sustained cynicism may be too much for anyone not seduced by the jazz and the cooky survivalist subplot. It's like anything else, but really we all know that not everything is.