As Good As It Gets

Absolutely Brilliant!

A different way of telling a story

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Maybe I just didn't get it. But I really don't see how anyone could thoroughly like this movie. Everyone in this movie is so selfish. The two main characters, Jerry (Biggs) & Amanda (Ricci) do one selfish thing after another in this movie. Amanda is especially excruciating. It has your typical witty dialog that I've become accustomed to when it comes to Woody Allen films. It's set up nicely, I just wish they were more likable. I realize we all have our ism's, but these people take the cake. Jerry has to have things precisely the way he wants them all the time. I can relate to that, because I'm kinda like that as well. I hate when plans go awry, but the way he goes about it irritated me. His character has no backbone, he constantly puts up with Amanda's ludicrous behavior, and it got to the point where I no longer cared. I like Jason Biggs. He'll never be considered a great actor, but I do like him. He seemed a bit out-of-place in this movie, not sure on how to play the role. He felt like Jim Levenstein, his American Pie character, only in a Woody Allen movie. He has moments where he does terrific work, others where he seems lost. He does well, all things considered. Nobody expected him to be cast in a Woody Allen movie, so he deserves all the credit in the world for even succeeding half the time. I did smile when he broke the fourth wall as well by talking to the camera. Christina Ricci plays her role well, but she infuriated me beyond belief. This woman is incorrigible in this movie. She doesn't care about anyone but herself, she lies through her teeth, and uses fake BS when she gets backed into a corner, not to mention her weird attraction to her father (!). The worst for me is when she reams Jerry for not wanting to snort cocaine up his nose, because he never goes with the moment. I was tempted to shut it off right then and there, but I only had 15 minutes left. Woody Allen is amusing in spades. I chuckled at his use of vocabulary. He had good chemistry with Biggs as well. Stockard Channing is OK as Ricci's mom. Danny DeVito & Jimmy Fallon also have roles. The ending was somewhat satisfactory for me, I got what I wanted, I was just so turned off by the two leads, especially Amanda. It's not that this movie is bad, just very unlikable. Many will probably like this, but I wasn't one of them. I will give it merit, though5.5/10

Jason Biggs stars with Woody Allen in "Anything Else," a 2003 film written and directed by the prolific Allen.Biggs is Jerry Falk, a young comic who meets an older comic, David Dobel, who talks with him about life, getting together with him in Central Park and waxing philosophically. Dobel is full of big words and big ideas, some of which are good ("You have to watch everything in this world, or else your life ends up as a black and white newsreel with cello accompaniment in a minor key.") and some are out there - like having a gun for every room.Jerry's life is complicated. He has a psychiatrist that never talks, an agent (Danny Devito) who's the laughing stock of New York, and a girlfriend (Christina Ricci) he adores but who for the last six months hasn't had sex with him. But she loves him. Even when she has sex with other men, she's thinking only of him. And by the way, her mother (Stockard Channing) an aspiring nightclub singer, is moving into his small apartment with her rental piano.Dobel attempts to extricate Jerry from some of these situations, but then seeing how Dobel handles things gives Jerry pause. Someone steals his parking space, Dobel goes back and smashes everything breakable on the car.There's really no plot, just some clever dialogue and some fun scenes. Allen is amazing. He can write a heavy drama one day, a sophisticated comedy the next, a woman's picture the next, and then a smallish in between comedy like "Anything Else." If you're a Woody Allen fan, you will enjoy this, even if you get a little frustrated for Jerry. As Dobel will tell you, never trust a naked bus driver. And life? Well, it's like anything else. Think about that.

A dreadful, boring, stupid, inane film, not worth seeing. An embarrassing film, in fact - it made me uneasy to watch it, knowi g that it purports to be a Wody Alen film. This is, I think, an effort by Woody Allen to recapitulate all the romantic comedies of his entire career, unfortunately by the colossally foolish method of culling every bad line, foolish and/or boring scenario he ever constructed and pasting them together to avoid making a new film. To make matters worse, the direction is derivative of, well, Woody Allen...at his worst. Which is not even the worst news, which is that the acting is beyond terrible. Ricci is dreadful. Awful is too generous a word. Horrible comes closer but falls short, ultimately.This movie is flat out horrific.

At around 6.5. From what I've seen, the gist of an IMDb Woody Allen rating is that you can add two points to the film if you're a fan, and subtract two points if you're not.My first time seeing this on the small screen, through a sequential re-viewing of the entire works (most of which I'd seen before, but not this one). Of course it has some great lines, deep existential truths and some perfectly observed moments. This is why I would watch any Woody film, you never leave empty. On the other hand, Allen's tendency to ventriloquise any protagonist that isn't him is in full effect with Biggs not really up to the character's dialogue as written (whether this is a problem with writing, acting or casting doesn't really matter). Also, the early script often drags, as Allen's tendency to hammer home a relationship dynamic in the character setup makes for a lot of work in the first part of the film. I guess non-fans might be turned off by the lack of likable characters.In the end though, this one contained some gems in the writing; and insight into the way the world provides you with plenty of impetus to conform to a bad situation, but very little to move to a better one. Don't usually like to write a spoiler, but for me the obvious twist left undone in Allen's assault on authority is that HE should have ended up dating Ricci's character while sending Falk off for 'his own good'. As it is, Allen gave himself the easy out. He's a prick like that. But also one of the best film-makers that ever lived.