So how do you like your eggs?

I thought of that old joke, y'know, the, this... this guy goes to a psychiatrist
and says, "Doc, uh, my brother's crazy; he thinks he's a chicken." And, uh, the
doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" The guy says, "I would, but I
need the eggs." Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about
relationships; y'know, they're totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and...
but, uh, I guess we keep goin' through it because, uh, most of us... need the
eggs.

These are the parting thoughts from Alvy Singer, the main character in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. Alvy is a New York comedian who falls in love with a girl named Annie Hall. The movie works as a narrative to all of Alvy’s relationships and his feelings towards love in general. If the quote above is any indication, he’s witty, funny, but a bit of a pessimist.

After having not really enjoyed watching Allen in Mighty Aphrodite, I must concede that I now can understand how great an actor he truly was/is. Annie Hall won best picture at the Oscars in 1977 (note: this is a Woody Allen about 20 years younger than his character in Mighty Aphrodite) and it’s easy to see why when you have such believable characters. Allen knows what kind of characters he is and he casts himself perfectly in Annie Hall (short, angry, witty, and Jewish).

But the thing that’s best about Annie Hall is how Allen depicts modern relationships and the crazy, memorable events we take out of them. The film ends with a montage of all the greatest scenes from Alvy and Annie’s life together. We see the first time the met at the tennis court, we see them struggle to make lobster for dinner after the lobsters break out of the bag, we see them try cocaine (which Alvy sneezes everywhere), and many other memories. Allen makes a valid point that relationships are irrational, crazy, and absurd, but he forgets that they’re also exciting, adventurous, and happy. And that’s why we need the eggs.

Mighty Aprhodite

Where in science is human intelligence connected with family genes? Lenny, the father of a brilliant adopted son Max, is out on a search for his assumed ‘brilliant’ mother. Lenny meets the mother finding that she is a not so bright prostate. Now I don’t mean to be awful and say this for all adopted children, but, if the parents were genesis just like Max wouldn’t you think that such brilliant parents wouldn’t put their child up for adoption. And now that I look into this topic, it says on a couple adoption information websites that most children who are put up for adoption come from a troubled and/or unplanned parent/s. So what I am wondering is… Was Lenny really expecting to find these brilliant parents at the other end of the rope? Because I know how much we all like the saying the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree but that doesn’t mean the tree isn’t sitting on a hill and the apple did fall near the tree and thus rolled far down the hill away from that tree.
Though this movie is quiet uplifting and I would agree that Woody Allen made this subject very interesting on many levels. The character choice is much in my favor. Generally Woody Allen hires his characters to be played by people who can become or are that part, that he isn’t just hiring another actor/ actress. I believe movies are much more enjoyable when characters are

cast by talent rather then by name.

-Jennifer

Now I ain't sayin' she's a golddigger, but that dude's really old!

Sex sells. Romance is what drives many of our favorite movies and TV shows. It’s the story that every writer and director can turn to because we the viewers like to see our own romantic troubles mirrored on the silver screen. Mighty Aphrodite (1995), directed by Woody Allen, is a film about a New York sportswriter, Lenny, and his search for the birth parents of his adopted son Max. But the movie takes a dramatic turn when we learn that Max’s birth mom is a prostitute/porn star (whose lack of intelligence begs the question why is Max so brilliant?).
Up to this point I think anybody can see the comedy in this film and find it humorous, but the drawback that makes this movie a pinch too disgusting for my taste is that the leading actor is PLAYED BY Woody Allen himself. The film introduces the viewer to a romance between the 60-something year old Woody Allen and the less-than-half-that age Mira Sorvino. Perhaps what makes this more distasteful is that any informed viewer can see how Allen might have thought up this storyline from his own life and the publicized relationship he had with his “stepdaughter”. Even without the back story, these types of relationships are not things people pay to see at the movies. Kenneth Turan sums this up in his review perfectly saying,

And though Allen's fascination with older men/younger women relationships has
yielded successes like "Manhattan" and "Husbands and Wives," the older he gets
the more uncomfortable these liaisons are to watch. And throwing in the
venerable male fantasy of getting involved with an attractive prostitute adds to
the off-putting taste that not even a finely tuned sense of humor can totally
erase.

Woody Allen straddles a fine line in this movie and unfortunately the film is slightly more vulgar than it is funny.