Like all of Woody Allen’s movies since his “early, funny ones,””Scoop” has received pretty uneven reviews. One camp considers it a loose, freewheeling trifle. The other, a plodding, boring mess. Count me in the former camp.
“Scoop” is silly fun. It’s got Woody being Woody – stammering, neuroses, card tricks and Vaudeville humor – minus the distasteful groping of young ladies (a Herculean feat for any man when you are the Director and the delectable Scarlett Johansen is your star). Ms. Johansen, herself, works better here than in “Match Point.” While she’s got the figure and sultry good looks to be a femme fatale, she may take a couple of decades to grow into that role. In the meantime, she is better suited to play awkward, unsure girls who happen – purely by accident – to be sexy.
Building on a few borrowed plot points from “Match Point,” that movie and this one can be seen as a pair as a major improvement of the central gimmick of “Melinda & Melinda,” that is, that comedy and tragedy can be mined from similar material.
The biggest crowd pleaser that’s something other than one of Woody’s one-liners was the response to the site gag of Woody driving around in one of them lil Smart Car “Two-fers.” This, I don’t understand. Seeing our diminutive hero tool around the English countryside in one of those glorified go-karts makes me pine for the day when we will finally see the little buggers zipping around our New York City streets. Perhaps in the next Woody Allen movie.