Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: VHS Tape EAN: 9786305470496 Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC ISBN: 6305470499 Label: Walt Disney Video Manufacturer: Walt Disney Video Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: Walt Disney Video Release Date: August 10, 1999 Running Time: 113 minutes Sales Rank: 3260 Studio: Walt Disney Video Theatrical Release Date: November 20, 1998
Amazon.com: Woody Allen's portrait of the celebrity life--as seen through the eyes of a newly divorced couple--is a black-and-white, New York-style La Dolce Vita that's a chillier flip side to Allen's earlier New York valentine, Manhattan. Despite a few missteps, though, it's an admirable (if dark) and worthy addition to the Allen pantheon. Kenneth Branagh and Judy Davis (both boasting American accents) star as the once-marrieds, each struggling to build new, separate lives in a media-saturated, celebrity-driven world. He tries his hands at celebrity profiles (while peddling a screenplay to any star that will listen) and falls into the lap of a bosomy starlet (Melanie Griffith), the first in a long line of briefly attainable women. She runs into a producer (Joe Mantegna) who offers her a job as a TV personality as well as a loving relationship. This seemingly simple double plot is punctuated with twists and turns in the form of flashbacks and innumerable side trips, all ravishingly photographed in black and white by the legendary Sven Nykvist, and populated by one of Allen's largest casts ever; if you blink you'll miss countless cameos by Isaac Mizrahi, Donald Trump, Hank Azaria, and a host of others.
While Davis is splendid as usual (aside from the requisite nervous breakdown scene she's done one too many times), somebody should have told Branagh to put a kibosh on his Woody Allen imitation, which is so impeccable as to become irritating. His failure in the role, however, isn't entirely his fault, as it's also another in a long line of unlikable male protagonists that Allen has created, as if daring audiences to hate his main characters after loving them in such movies as Manhattan and Annie Hall. He's never more unlikable than in a painful sequence in which he tags along with a spoiled, temperamental teen idol (a shrewd and clever Leonardo DiCaprio) and proves himself the quintessential noodge. Far more enjoyable misadventures with Branagh include Charlize Theron in the film's best performance as a libidinous supermodel with a penchant for echinacea; a stunning Famke Janssen as a successful book editor Branagh almost moves in with; and Winona Ryder, acting like an adult for the first time, as an aspiring actress who catches Branagh's eye more than once. All manage to slip through Branagh's fingers by the end of the film.
Despite the film's lack of focus, Allen aficionados will want this film for at least two wonderful moments, one in which Davis seeks solace from a streetwise fortune teller after she's fleeing her own wedding, and a beautiful nighttime scene in which Branagh romances a captivated Ryder at a subway kiosk. Both episodes prove that Allen, despite the fitful period he's moved into, still has that movie magic. --Mark Englehart
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Rating: - The flimsiness of celebrityhood
This wry and devastating portrait of the cult of celebrityhood is one of Allen's most brilliant--and entertaining--films. It isn't Allen's first effort at deconstructing celebrityhood. "Stardust Memories" was. But "Celebrity" goes way beyond "Stardust" in both depth and self-criticism. For it must be recognized that the chief celebrity at whom Allen is poking fun is himself.
Kenneth Branagh's performance as the ersatz Woody Allen is simply stunning. He's captured Allen's nebbish persona so well that he almost begins to physically resemble Allen by the film's end. Some critics found the uncanny mimicry irritating, but to do so is to miss the whole point. Allen wants to show that there's a flimsiness to celebrityhood, a shallowness that all of the celebrities in the film exhibit to one degree of another. Having Branagh "play" Woody Allen is just a metaphor for the smoke and mirror nature of celebrityhood. ... Read More
Rating: - One of Woody's best, and most under appreciated films..
"Celebrity" is one of Woody's best, and most under appreciated and also unjustly attacked films. The production is first rate, the characters diverse, and the acting -- from Kenneth Branagh, Judy Davis, Leonardo DiCaprio, Melanie Griffith, Joe Mantegna -- as good as in any Allen film. It is a wonderful and highly observant film, that seems to offend many for reasons that no one seems able to really express, other than by resorting to vituperative adjectives and hand wringing.
As far as I can tell, it offends some people because it is thought to be "more of the same" late "Manhattan" period Allen ensemble work -- pity Mozart if he had been cranking out symphonies for these complainers; it is thought to be annoying because Kenneth Branagh does what is, really, a wonderful Allen impression, Woody being too old by the time was made to play the lead in the story; because the characters are more fully developed, and ... Read More
Rating: - Redux, Redux
The Chinese have their years named after various animals. Apparently this year for me is the Year of Woody Allen. For the better part of the year I have been watching, and in several cases re- watching films, that the comic has acted in, produced, directed or some combination of the three. Some have been disappointing. Some, like Annie Hall, have withstood the test of time and go into the pantheon. Others, reflecting the fact that if one lives long enough, as Allen has, then one is sure to repeat themes worked in the past, sometimes with uneven results. That is the case with Celebrity. There are some very funny individual scenes that rank with Allen classics but overall we have been here before. Allen's look at the pranks and pitfalls of celebrity in New York City (his favorite locale, and correctly so) in the mid-1990's is the updated version of his less than funny Zelig that looked at celebrity in the Jazz Age.
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Rating: - Not One Of Woody's Best
This film included many of our best actors: they were great. However, the script lacked some of the juice of Mr. Allan's better films.
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- The flimsiness of celebrityhood
