CAFÉ SOCIETY Review

Café Society is a movie I wanted to like more and more as the film played on, but as it did so I actually liked it less and less. Beginning with the standard narration from writer/director Woody Allen that drops us into this tale of a young man looking for a place where the grass might be greener things are promising enough. We are introduced to a cadre of family members around our protagonist, Bobby (Jesse Eisenberg), who will inevitably inform where this current inclination to leave his father's failing jewelry business and move across the country to Los Angeles will actually take him. It is 1930's Los Angeles no less and so Bobby is struck by the great seduction of movie stars, movie star parties, and the most beautiful of people to allure him to the city. It is a place considered mythic to the otherwise unrefined Bobby who has been stuck in Manhattan his entire life. The promise of new beginnings, though somewhat stalled by the disregard of his Uncle Phil (Steve Carell), and the downright gorgeous cinematography of Vittorio Storaro that bathes all of golden age Hollywood in gold lends Café Society this vibrant and crisp feeling that resonates strongly with the modern audience hoping to catch a glimpse of the glitz and glamour of 1930's Hollywood that is well-documented, but too rarely brought to life. This fascination can only last so long though, when it becomes clear Allen's latest isn't necessarily about the introspection of this period in history or even a story that compliments the time period in lending insight to the names and faces we all know, but would like to know better. Instead, Café Society becomes a story solely about the romantic plight of Bobby, an Allen surrogate that Eisenberg again plays tremendously without the burden of having the actual Allen co-star alongside him as he did in 2012's To Rome With Love, but as with that film Café Society ends up offering little more than Allen's insecure yet intellectual quips on love, life, and religion among other things. Unfortunately, at this point such musings without an exceptional story on which to convey them simply feel like little more than standard meditations. It is unfortunate there isn't more imagination and wonder behind this latest excursion of Allen's for Café Society's potential initially feels as fresh and crisp as Bobby's outlook upon arriving in Los Angeles.

International Trailer for Woody Allen's CAFE SOCIETY

For the last month or so I've been listening to a podcast called You Must Remember This which chronicles the "The secret and/or forgotten history of Hollywood's first century." More specifically I've just completed last fall's series about MGM that gave fifteen episodes worth of stories about the heyday of the most famous studio that more or less created the studio system the golden age of Hollywood is known for. Throughout those episodes there were plenty of insights I wasn't previously aware of and of course facets of the industry that were beyond fascinating, but I bring this up only because it informs how excited I am about the latest film from auteur Woody Allen. Led by the appealing pairing of Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart Café Society follows a young man who arrives in Hollywood during the 1930's with the hope of working in the film industry. Upon arrival, he falls in love and finds himself swept up in the society that defined the spirit of the age. More than anything else about this trailer it is the visual vibrancy that stands out. Allen's films tend to always have a certain small or confined feel to them as if the director is constantly creating within his own, small world, but there is some actual scope to this trailer with the luscious costume design and cinematography only adding to the sense of time and place. I wasn't a huge fan of last years Irrational Man, but I enjoyed Magic in the Moonlight well enough with its period setting and of course Midnight in Paris is one of Allen's best works in his distinguished career and with this looking very much in line with those if not exactly exploring the same ideas I can't wait to see what the full film holds. Café Society also stars Corey Stoll, Steve Carell, Parker Posey, Jeannie Berlin, Blake Lively, Ken Scott, and is set to open the 69th Annual Cannes Film Festival.