Anything Else

Anything Else is a 2003 American romantic comedy film written and directed by Woody Allen, produced by Letty Aronson, and starring Jason Biggs, Christina Ricci, Allen, Stockard Channing, Danny DeVito, Jimmy Fallon, Erica Leerhsen and KaDee Strickland. The film was shown as the opening night selection at the 60th annual Venice International Film Festival. The film was released theatrically on September 19, 2003, to mixed reviews and commercial failure.

Anything Else
Theatrical release poster
Directed byWoody Allen
Written byWoody Allen
Produced byLetty Aronson
Starring
Narrated byJason Biggs
CinematographyDarius Khondji
Edited byAlisa Lepselter
Distributed byDreamWorks Pictures
Release dates
  • August 27, 2003 (2003-08-27) (Venice Film Festival)
  • September 19, 2003 (2003-09-19) (theatrical (US))
Running time
108 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$18 million[1]
Box office$13.6 million

Plot

Jerry Falk (Biggs), an aspiring writer living in New York City, has a girlfriend, Brooke (Strickland). He falls in love with Amanda (Ricci) and has an affair with her. Brooke learns of Jerry's infidelity and leaves him. Amanda leaves her own boyfriend for Jerry. Jerry turns to aging, struggling artist David Dobel (Allen, loosely based on David Panich) 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".

Cast

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 40%, based on reviews from 137 critics. The site's consensus states: "Too many elements from better Woody Allen films are being recycled here."[2] On Metacritic the film has an average score of 43 out of 100, based on reviews from 37 critics.[3] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade C− on scale of A to F.[4]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three out of four, and wrote: "At a time when so many American movies keep dialogue at a minimum so they can play better overseas, what a delight to listen to smart people whose conversation is like a kind of comic music."[5] James Berardinelli of ReelViews wrote: "Anything Else may not be the second coming of Annie Hall, but it has more wit and substance than almost every post-college romance that sees the inside of a projection booth".[6] David Stratton of Variety wrote: "The younger casting brings a freshness to the material and, with Allen as the weird mentor, there are plenty of laughs, even if the pacing's slow and the running time over-extended."[7]

Mike Clark of USA Today was critical of the characterizations, the music, the length ("brutally overlong"), but praised the actors for their performances: "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, though both actors (and especially Ricci) do what they're asked to do." Clark also says the film "sounds as if it ought to be funny, but like so much else here, intent and execution keep missing each other." and complains that the misery of the story is not tempered by sufficient laughs.[8]

In August 2009, it was cited by Quentin Tarantino as one of his favorite 20 films since 1992, when his career as a filmmaker began.[9][10]

Leonard Maltin, in his TV, Movie, & Video Guide, gave the film a "BOMB" rating (the only Allen-directed film ever to receive this citation), and called it "a rare misfire for Woody, but still a big one".[11] In 2016, film critics Robbie Collin and Tim Robey ranked Anything Else as one of the worst movies by Woody Allen.[12]

Soundtrack

References
  1. "Anything Else (2003) - Financial Information". The Numbers. Archived from the original on 2019-10-17. Retrieved 2020-05-10.
  2. "Anything Else". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Archived from the original on February 19, 2008. Retrieved April 4, 2020.
  3. "Anything Else (2003): Reviews". Metacritic. Archived from the original on October 23, 2020. Retrieved April 2, 2020.
  4. "ANYTHING ELSE (2003) C-". CinemaScore. Archived from the original on 2018-12-20.
  5. Ebert, Roger. "Anything Else movie review & film summary (2003)". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on 2020-06-07. Retrieved 2020-05-10.
  6. "Review: Anything else". movie-reviews.colossus.net. Archived from the original on 21 September 2003. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  7. Stratton, David (28 August 2003). "Anything Else". Variety. Archived from the original on 28 June 2017. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  8. "USATODAY.com - Allen's 'Anything Else' is a test of patience". Usatoday.com. Archived from the original on 2020-09-27. Retrieved 2020-05-10.
  9. "Quentin Tarantino - Forgotten Jason Biggs Movie is One of the Best Films of All Time". Movieline. 17 August 2009. Archived from the original on May 15, 2013. Retrieved January 7, 2013.
  10. Brown, Lane (August 17, 2009). "Team America, Anything Else Among the Best Movies of the Past Seventeen Years, Claims Quentin Tarantino". Vulture. New York Magazine. Archived from the original on February 13, 2013. Retrieved May 10, 2020.
  11. Maltin, Leonard (2009). Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide. New York City: Signet Books. ISBN 978-1-101-10660-0.
  12. "All 47 Woody Allen movies - ranked from worst to best". The Telegraph. October 12, 2016. Archived from the original on January 18, 2021. Retrieved February 12, 2017.
  13. Harvey, Adam (2007). The Soundtracks of Woody Allen. US: Macfarland & Company,Inc. p. 26. ISBN 9780786429684.
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