Would that Woody Allen were a major film artist. It would be good to have some artistically successful American comedies about how we live now, and that is not what Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters, from 1986, is.
To begin with, it takes a long time for any of the movie’s humor to make us laugh (to make ME laugh, anyway, but I can’t imagine anyone finding the first 45 minutes of this film funny). Further, Allen is pathetically sloppy at writing dialogue, which is often thin and banal. And not all of the acting is good: Mia Farrow and Max von Sydow are dull, Allen himself dreadful. Finally, the film, though a comedy, is unpersuasively and even ludicrously optimistic. Michael Caine stops obsessing over and pursuing Barbara Hershey, and an infertile Allen actually impregnates Dianne Wiest!
Hannah and Her Sisters (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
