Whatever Works, Woody Allen

Another in a long-line of cinematic love-songs to NYC, Whatever Works features Larry David as Boris Yellnikov, ultimate New Yorker whose chance encounters with runaway members of a Christian Mississipppi family allows them to discover their repressed selfs and, hence, themselves. As the movie implies, only in NYC could individuals be given the opportunity to be true individuals.

For the first third of the film the look and the acting are flat. I became more engaged when the ever sunny Melody (played by Evan Rachel Wood) began to espouse Boris' nihilism--and the film continued to pick up speed with the arrival of first her mother (Marietta played by Patricia Clarkson) and then her father (John played by Ed Begley, Jr.). Marietta finds happiness as an art photographer in a menage a trois; John finds a gay lover. Even Boris, the self-proclaimed genius physicist, finds happiness with a psychic.

Recommend.