Perhaps Woody isn’t ready to confront New York’s changes yet, but to me it still seems clear he believes in its greatness (all the characters who move to it find themselves and become better people).

Boris seems to be truly out of place in this New York of modern bohemianism. His apartment looks like the last remnant of a by gone era and aesthetic. How he even connects with the outside world feels like complete fantasy to me.

If I view it as an intelligent, yet totally light affair, the film works for me–far more successfully than what he attempted in ‘Anything Else.’ But it doesn’t move me in the same way that scene in Annie Hall does when Alvy stops to talk to a couple on the street and they say the key to their happiness is being shallow and having no original or interesting opinions on anything. Admittedly, I was waiting for Allen to confront some of the characters in Whatever Works with the same venom.

On another note, I think Hollywood Ending is Allen’s best movie in years.