"A Rainy Day in New York"

If you know me, and if you have been a regular reader over the years, you know that I have always been a fan of Woody Allen and his movies.  And if you are even the least bit aware of what has been happening with Allen over the last several years, you also know that any discussions of Woody Allen anymore have become, shall we say, "complicated."  

These complications became very much a part of the release of his most recent film, "A Rainy Day in New York", which was scheduled to be released in 2019, and, to be honest, I don't even know if the movie ever was released theatrically in the United States.  You can read all about those details here.  Regardless of all of that, I finally got around to watching this movie over the weekend via streaming, so the question is, How was it, as a movie?

Answer:  It was good, it was funny, my wife and I both laughed a lot at it.  It was absolutely gorgeous to look at.  It was also familiar.  It was, in short, a "Woody Allen movie."

Timothee Chalamet plays the "Woody Allen Character" in this one, including serving as the voice over narrator at times.  He's a college student at a niche New York liberal arts college.  He's not sure what he wants to do in life, other than playing in high stakes poker games (at which he is quite good) and not following the path that his socialite parents wish for him.  Elle Fanning plays his ditzy girlfriend, who somehow manages to land an interview with a famous movie director for the college newspaper.  The director is in New York City, and Gatsby (Chalamet, yes, his name in the movie is actually "Gatsby") then plans a romantic weekend trip to his favorite city in the world, New York, after Fanning gets her one hour interview with the auteur.

Well, as you can imagine, complications and hijinks ensue.  Fanning gets caught up in an artistic crisis between the director, played by Liev Schreiber and his screenwriter, played by Jude Law, and is romantically lured by a handsome international movie star.     Gatsby, meanwhile, runs into some old friends of his from prep school, the younger sister (Selena Gomez) of an old girl friend, and, much to his dismay, a confrontation with his mother, who springs an amazing surprise upon him.

Oh, and it's raining most of the time. Hence, the title of the movie.

I have to highlight one really funny bit.  Early on, he meets up with his brother and his fiancé at their apartment.  In a private moment, the brother says that he doesn't want to marry this woman he loves, because "he can't stand how she laughs."  With the wedding a mere few weeks away, Gatsby tries to convince him how ridiculous this is, and then he, and we, hear her laugh. Trust me, this is funny.

As it often does in Allen comedies, the situations resolve themselves, and you come away feeling good about it.  Still, like I said, the Woodman has taken us down this path before.  

Two and One-Half Stars from The Grandstander.

Oh, and getting back to those complications.   We all have to make up our own minds as to how we deal with these Art-versus-the-Artist situations.  As you will see in the article that I linked to this story, Chalamet, Gomez, and Rebecca Hall, who also appeared in the movie, made some decisions about this.   I'll judge no one for whatever decision that they may make in regard to these situations, and I would ask the same from anyone else.

Chalamet, Fanning, and Allen