Shameful #4 - Annie Hall

I was given Annie Hall after the admission that I had never seen a Woody Allen film, and with it being a multiple award winner, one of his most popular films, and a New York classic, I thought it'd be just perfect for me.

Annie Hall (1977, Allen)

And it really almost was. Woody Allen paints a really charming and relatable picture of both Manhattan and Brooklyn, and of some daily life pet peeves (the scene where he's in front of the pretentious idiot at the movies is one great example). It's just brilliantly structured and written; I loved Alvy Singer's asides to the camera, the scene where Annie's distant in bed, and my favorite was the two of them on Annie's balcony, showing both of them frantically worrying about sounding good to the other. I have to admit, as a New Yorker, I also enjoyed some of the jokes about LA, mainly the driving everywhere and the fact that Alvy's terrible at it.

Unfortunately for me, I couldn't stand Alvy. I was really surprised, since I am a neurotic Brooklynite (I'm actually just about half an hour away from Coney Island!), but he's just too neurotic. I just couldn't feel too sorry for him; while Annie's also definitely a flawed character, Alvy's anxiety triggers were just so over the top that I couldn't understand why she, or any of his other girlfriends, would be with him at all. For example, I mentioned Alvy not being able to drive in LA. Immediately after crashing into three different things, he's pulled over by a cop. Hilarious. But he just fumbles so damn much that I just got tired of it. He is charming sometimes, but not enough to offset how annoying he is. It's really kind of a shame, because I loved pretty much everything else about Annie Hall.