John Baylin

Although it's the fashion to look down upon Allen's more recent works a la been-there-done-that I found this film to be completely charming and engaging. And here's the thing. Despite the fact that the entire theater audience consisted of me and one other person I laughed out loud consistently throughout the film. Yes Gatsby is a ridiculous person but let's remember this: he's fictional right? So why not make him a silly romantic anachronism? I hadn't realized this but apparently Elle Fanning is the new Drew Barrymore. It's a carbon copy, which like another opinion expressed here made me think about the wonderful Everyone Says I Love You. And so Timothee Chalamet is the latest actor to play "the Woody Allen character" and he does it pretty well. I thought the best version of that was Kenneth Branagh in Celebrity. And I thought good for Mr. Allen! At 84 who wouldn't want to be represented by the young, hottie, current "it" actor of the moment. In a way, how I saw it was that all the male characters were in some ways representations of different aspects of Mr. Allen's personality. And although the film reeks of White Privilege and White Male Privilege the 2 sexiest characters in the story are Hispanic so good for you Woody!

First off I should say I thoroughly enjoyed this film, even though I'm a bit of a Nolan detractor. The music score was particularly brilliant! The plot was very easy to understand and I don't even think I need post a Spoiler Alert to continue here. The plot was simply the discovering of the key to Inversion and Entropic Reverse-Inversion through the backwards/forward pseudo application of a Bio-metric Post Inversion Syndrome Counter-Therapy causing the fusion ratio to counterbalance Reverse Inversion in an artificial yet wholly concrete temporal visual time and space continuum. If you can grasp that, then the plot's a piece of cake. You see when a coaxial reverse spectrum replicates itself within the manifest guidelines of an Inversion Sub-Environment, past and future temporal constructs diffuse, then reverse, then re-reverse into a predetermined yet fractured reorganization sequence which ultimately cancels then re-installs itself in order for the characters (and the audience) to establish who the heck they were all working for and what the heck they were all doing. Got it?

This film just opened today in the U.S. so it's interesting reading all these very well written reviews from U.K. people. I pretty much experienced most of the things others did--one of them being considering leaving at some point before the end (which I didn't). I can also understand how Dickens purists might balk at this rendition. As a comedy it sort of got some chuckles but this film-maker's first film "In The Loop" was hysterically laugh-out-loud funny throughout. He's never been able to replicate that since. Although the TV series "Veep" is a whole other story! I wanted to comment on the color blind casting. It wasn't until the appearance of Steerforth's very black mother that I was like huh?? but that was like a breakthrough moment for me. The people of color are not playing people of color. They're actors playing the various Dickens characters. Just like the white actors. It truly is color-blind casting. It's not political correctness. It's just reality and it's lovely to behold. But all that said, I found the film to be a confusing mess.