Annie Hall (DVD) > Reviews

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 ... Read review

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. ... 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, ... 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 ... 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), ... Read review