Woody Allen has made 46 films, of which I’ve seen 46, and I’m not sure which of us is more tired of them. What I am sure of is that both of us will soon be forgetting “Café Society,” a scrapbook of bits from better Allen films that builds up to a hearty shrug.
It’s the glamourous 1930s, and Jesse Eisenberg — delivering the imitation-Woody stammer, the hunched shoulders, the flailing T. Rex arms fluttering from the elbows as he meets yet another of Allen’s sweet-natured prostitutes — plays a young Bronx kid on the make in LA, where his uncle (Steve Carell), a top Hollywood agent, gives him a job and asks a comely, down-to-earth assistant (Kristen Stewart) to show the young man around. Cue romance.
Bobby (Eisenberg) has a brother who is another of Allen’s many comical gangsters and a brother-in-law who is the film’s designated moral philosopher. As usual, luscious women (Blake Lively is also on hand) show an improbable interest in nebbishy men, as usual there is an inter-generational romance and as usual the 30-year age gap is barely mentioned. Parts of the film could be outtakes from “Radio Days” or “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” and when one high-strung Jewish woman says, “better a murderer,” you’ll hear the punch line in your head before it is said on-screen: “than he becomes a Christian!”
The movie has so little ambition, even to be charming or funny, that it isn’t as irritating as some of Allen’s feebler recent efforts, and Eisenberg and Stewart have some rapport. Working with Allen for the first time, the great cinematographer Vittorio Storaro bathes his leading lady in glowy magic-hour enchantment and at one point contrives a power failure so he can ravish her with shadows from a fading sunset.
It’s hard not to appreciate the fondness, but it would be nice if the movie had a point. Instead, there are shallow musings on a moral question, some Woody-ish chatter about the afterlife and, bizarrely, a dispute about whether being taken with Hollywood glitz and celebrity name-dropping makes you a superficial person.
I say “bizarrely” because chunks of the script are given over to name-dropping (Busby Berkeley, Ginger Rogers, etc.), often by Allen himself, narrating the film. Moreover, Bobby himself is a professional toady who manages a club dedicated to cosseting the fabulous. Why tell us there’s more to life than celebrities with one breath, then spend the next telling us about how every boldface name was in your joint last night? The contradictions also prove too much for Carell, a fine actor who nevertheless can’t figure out how to play his thinly written role.
Now 80, Allen has said he makes movies to keep himself busy, and I respect that. Rather than perfect a film, he’d rather move on to the next one. I’d care more about this one’s failures if I thought he was really trying.