Today’s Prayer Focus

Anything Else

MPA Rating: R-Rating (MPA) for a scene of drug use and some sexual references.
Moral Rating: not reviewed
Moviemaking Quality:
Primary Audience: Adults
Genre: Romance Comedy
Length: 1 hr. 48 min.
Year of Release: 2003
USA Release: September 19, 2003
Featuring
Woody Allen
Jason Biggs
Stockard Channing
Glenn Close
Danny DeVito
Director
Woody Allen
Producer
Letty Aronson
Distributor

Jerry Falk, an aspiring writer living in New York City, has a girlfriend, Brooke. He falls in love with Amanda and has an affair with her. Brooke learns of Jerry’s infidelity and leaves him, while Amanda leaves her own boyfriend for Jerry. Jerry turns to aging, struggling artist David Dobel, who acts as his mentor, which includes trying to help sort out Jerry’s romantic life. Dobel says that when he told a cab driver of all his anxieties and phobias in life, the cab driver told him, “It’s like anything else.”

Dobel tries to convince Jerry that his manager is only holding him back and his relationship with Amanda is the most destructive force in his life. Amanda continuously cheats on Jerry. Amanda leaves and then comes back. Jerry’s neuroses start to worsen. Eventually, Jerry leaves town as Dobel gets him a job writing for television in California. Amanda has an affair with the doctor who was treating her and runs off with him. He sees them together laughing as she once did with him as the cab is taking him towards the airport. Jerry talks to the cabbie of love and relationships. The cabbie simply replies, “It’s like anything else.”


Viewer CommentsSend your comments
Negative
Negative—Movie about a young nihilistic writer (Biggs), and his atheist life coach (Woody Allen), and a girlfriend, for whom he leaves another girl for, which can have sexual intercourse with anyone except him. Vengeance is glorified as courage with positive remarks from the young about, after Dobel broke all glasses of a car in a rage, because two guys stole his parking. Also, isn’t it strange that a movie with an atheist worldview uses the word “God” eleven times, “Jesus” four times, “Christ” two times and that a character shouts “Jesus-Christ” once? We see the true atheist nature of Woody Allen in this movie. Very offensive!
My Ratings: [Very Offensive/2]
Eric, age 24
Movie Critics
…a test of patience …It’s asking a lot of audiences to spend nearly two hours with characters as screen-unfriendly as the ones played by Biggs and Ricci, …Their misery, however, isn’t tempered by laughs…
Mike Clark, USA Today
…It boasts some of the meanest, most elegant sexual humor and cruelest, funniest topical gags since Billy Wilder’s heyday… It’s an uncomfortable movie to watch…
Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune
…there is nothing to set this work apart from any number of mediocre Allen films. …With few positive personality attributes to counter all the negative ones, it has become increasingly difficult to muster much sympathy or even interest in any of his characters…
Jean Oppenheimer, The Hollywood Reporter
…Many instances of sexually related dialogue are present (including talk of affairs, orgasm and masturbation)… Sex/Nudity: Heavy | Profanity: Moderate | Violence: Mild…
ScreenIt!
…atheistic worldview, several sexual encounters, crude humor, and bad language and profanity…
Preview Family Movie and TV Review
…Woody’s newest offering is merely a pale shadow of what once was…
Michael Elliott, Movie Parables
…There’s little nudity, but there are several explicit conversations about sex. …A man describes an erotic fantasy, and two men talk about masturbation.” (etc.)
Kids-in-mind