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Whatever Works

2009

Woody Allen

Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood, Patricia Clarkson, Conleth Hill ...

7.0

39,095

Comedy Woody Allen returns to New York with an offbeat comedy about a crotchety misanthrope (Larry David) and a naïve, impressionable young runaway from the south (Evan Rachel Wood). When her uptight parents, arrive to rescue her, they are quickly drawn into wildly unexpected romantic entanglements. Everyone discovers that finding love is just a combination of lucky chance and appreciating the value of Whatever Works.

	Author	Review
United States	A. O. Scott The New York Times	"Kvetch Your Enthusiasm. (...) My problem with 'Whatever Works' (...) is not that the premise is a wee bit familiar. Rather, it’s that the delivery is off."	NEG
United States	Peter Travers Rolling Stone	"Feels like something out of time and, worse, out of step. Hell, Allen wrote the script back in the 1970s for Zero Mostel. (...) But no true movie fan will want to miss the comic mind–meld of Woody and Larry. (...) Rating: ★★½ (out of four)."	NEU
United States	Kenneth Turan Los Angeles Times	"A sour romantic comedy, only sporadically amusing, (...) The characters are hardly more than stick figures, and both the film's incidents and its dialogue are so arbitrary"	NEG
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"Woody prevents the plot from descending into logic and reason with her character’s blind faith that everything is for the better (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United Kingdom	Jason Solomons The Guardian	"Woody Allen is still funny (...) These later films are nevertheless little urban tales of considerable philosophical import, told with an old-fashioned lightness of touch, one I find continually charming."	POS
United Kingdom	Tim Robey Telegraph	"What's Woody Allen's worst film? Look no further."	NEG
United States	Scott Tobias AV Club	"Of the many Woody Allen surrogates past (...) [Larry David] may be the most philosophically harmonious."	POS
United Kingdom	Anthony Quinn The Independent	"It is terrible (...) This shrugging philosophy would sound more persuasive if it were tied to a recognisable human drama, but Allen no longer looks capable of it."	NEG
United Kingdom	Ben Walters Time Out	"'Whatever Works' is rooted in an agreeable sensibility (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"	POS

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