Annie Hall DVD

Advantages: A funny and enjoyable experience
Disadvantages: Erm...you might not like Woody Allen

Annie Hall was the 'breakout' film for Woody Allen as a director. The film won four Academy awards including best picture/director and saw Allen move away from the freewheeling comedy films he was best known for at the time. Annie Hall is essentially about the relationship between Alvy Singer (Allen), a typically neurotic Allen character, in this case a comedian, and aspiring singer Annie Hall, played by Diane keaton in an Oscar winning performance. ...
...between Alvy and Annie's family. Annie Hall begins with Allen speaking straight to the camera as Alvy. The scene is an immediate indication that Allen has moved on and is seeking to make a different type of picture with more ambition. Alvy's very Woody Allen concerns give us an insight into his character and make an arresting beginning; "There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the ... Read review

Advantages: Accessible, good natured, consistenly funny
Disadvantages: That Allen never quite matched the brilliance again.

...DIane Keaton as the titular Annie Hall, it's as pleasurable a way to spend 90 minutes as I can imagine. Alvy Singer (Allen) is a gag writer, a Jewish gag writer, a neurotic Jewish gag writer. Failed relationships, a career stuttering in sitcom land, Alvy shuffles through life examining how it all wound up like this, and casting his bespectacled ears and eyes about for the next conspiratorial remark or gesture. Hopelessly paranoid, he is suddenly ...
...on firm action and winning Annie back. The old paranoid neurotic boy meets dizzy neurotic girl story. 'Annie Hall' is every relationship you've ever had, but with every crossed word and embarrasing moment amplified by 10. The good times display a warmth and genuine appreciation for feelings that Allen so frequently misses the point of. The humour in the screenplay, co-written with Marshall Brickman, comes refreshingly from all angles. There is clever ... Read review

Advantages: Please see review
Disadvantages: Please see review

...Best Picture and Best Director, Annie Hall, a bittersweet, autobiographical romantic comedy, is the quintessential Woody Allen film. Featuring all the themes - love, relationships, neuroses, fame, guilt, pessimism, his love of New York (and dislike of LA), death and life - that we have come to expect from a man whose writing and directing career has spanned more than three decades. Plot summary: Allen plays the main character, Alvy Singer, a standup ...
...is only when he meets Annie that he sees himself as someone worth being with. Annie [Diane Keaton] is about as opposite in personality as Alvy as possible. When he meets her, she's unaffected and vivacious if quirky [she throws around terms like "La-de-dah" and "neat" without the slightest heed for sophistication]. The contrast in backgrounds and interests between Alvy and Annie provides much of the material for satire in the film. When Alvy goes ... Read review

Advantages: Woody Allen dialogue at its finest with universally brilliant performances
Disadvantages: If you don't like any other Woody Allen movie you won't like this one

...Amy and Mike Nichols' Closer, Annie Hall points out that love is not always a many-splendoured thing. Love can hurt, love can make us confused and love can not always lead to the obvious conclusions. This isn't the standard boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back again. This is more like boy loses girl and painstakingly analyses his relationship from various points intercutting moments of his life before meeting girl and ...
...films (he has never watched Annie Hall or any of his other films since he finished them) has resulted in this being a bare-bones DVD release, so it may be an idea to rent the film first, as I did, and there's a good chance you'll then decide it has to be a part of your permanent collection. ... Read review

Advantages: Great film
Disadvantages: No features!!

...for me, is Allen's best. Annie Hall is the ultimate Woody Allen film; it has a perfect balance of slapstick and verbal humour, it is original and fresh, and it is very engaging, with characters who behave like real people, not constructs, or a means to an end. You know the story by now; the neurotic Woody Allen character falls head over heels in love with sorta arty, sorta sporty, mainly ditzy Annie Hall (played by the ever wonderful Diane Keaton), ...
...character is no longer with Annie Hall). It features many elements we have come to expect from Woody Allen, not just the neurotic porrayal of himself. We also get the simple black and white credits which open the film (bizarrely at odds with the rest of the film in the austere authority they give the beginning of the film), we get rantings about anti-semitism (Woody Allen's not a "self-hating" Jew, honest) and name dropping aplenty (there's a particuarly ... Read review