Annie Hall (1977)
Decided to start watching all of the Oscar best picture winners, in order. I hadn’t heard of some of these movies, some I love and have seen multiple times already and I actively hate others, planning to never watch them again. Fair warning, there will be spoilers in these and other reviews to help explain my point of view.
**Woody Allen’s problematic place in history and accusations made against him will not play a part in this review**
Annie Hall is entertaining enough, but it’s not one of the greatest of all time, no matter what “film experts” tell me. Looking back at the relationship between Woody Allen’s Alvy Singer and Diane Keaton’s Annie, this movie is definitely what became the typical Woody Allen film. He is his usual neurotic character, somehow able to command the attention of many attractive women (all of whom we meet in flashback as Alvy ponders the reasons his relationship with Annie ended) even though he is a bit of a drag due to his insecurity and neuroses and has never been all that attractive. Annie is flighty, disorganized, a bad driver and a goofy dresser, but she is pretty and sexually adventurous and for some reason wants to be with Alvy.
Even though the film is supposed to examine why their relationship ended, I don’t think we ever get an answer. More to the point, there isn’t a major reason or smoking gun; their relationship simply ran it’s course. What happens along the way is supposed to be one of the greatest comedies of all time. While some of the scenes are funny, I would never consider this one of the best comedies I’ve seen. I enjoy other Allen films, this one just didn’t resonate with me as much as many of his other films, particularly those starring Mia Farrow. While I don’t find any Allen film to be perfect nor would any of them make my favorites list, I can appreciate what Annie Hall was going for and had an OK time watching it. Perhaps my issue is that there isn’t much to the plot; we see Annie and Alvy meet, they become a couple, go to analysis and break up, then seemingly find their way back to becoming friends sometime after their final break-up. That is it, nothing all that interesting or eye-opening except for the oddities of the storytelling, since Allen does break the fourth wall a few ties and uses animation at one point. This isn’t enough to make the film great though. How this won Best Picture is astonishing to me. Perhaps it’s just that is was reflective of the introspection and rise of analysis and self-actualization that was happening in the country. I would imagine that those in the movie industry identified with this in particular. Not that it had a lot of competition; none of the other nominees really jump out to me as particularly amazing. Even lovers of Star Wars can hopefully understand why it didn’t win. In summary, this was just OK; not great, not terrible, so I can only give it 2 out of 5 stars.
