Celebrities (1998)

Directed by: Woody Allen | 109 minutes | drama, comedy | Actors: Greg Mottola, Jeff Mazzola, Dick Mingalone, Vladimir Bibic, Melanie Griffith, Francisco Quidjada, Aleksa Palladino, Dan Moran, Peter Castellotti, A. Lee Morris, Douglas McGrath, Kenneth Branagh, Maurice Sonnenberg, Winona Ryder, Craig Ulmschneider, JK Simmons, Debra Messing, Famke Janssen, Joe Mantegna, Bebe Neuwirth, Leonardo DiCaprio, Gretchen Mol, Sam Rockwell, Adrian Grenier, Hank Azaria, Celia Weston, Donald Trump, Jeffrey Wright

Careers spanning more than forty years have inevitable peaks and troughs. Master director Woody Allen also cannot escape dips in his oeuvre, in addition to an overwhelming number of peaks. What is striking about Allen is that these valleys are only valleys because the average level is so very high. So that what is a mediocre film for Allen (like the weak comedies from the early 21st century) would be a fine production for any other director.

‘Celebrity’ is the exception to this rule. Everything that can go wrong goes wrong in this 1998 comedy. The film aims to be a satire about the celebrity phenomenon, but apart from the fact that the film is as empty in content as the celebrity status, the message never gets across. All the more regrettable when you consider that Allen had already made sharp satires with ‘The Purple Rose of Cairo’ and ‘Annie Hall’, although they were more about Hollywood than about celebrity.

The fact that the film does not succeed as a tragicomedy is because the characters are not well developed and the casting fails. Kenneth Branagh plays the role Woody Allen usually reserves for himself: the neurotic intellectual who fails just as obstinately in careers as in relationships. Unlike Will Ferrell or Larry David, who played the same role with reasonable results in later films, Branagh is not convincing. What we see is an amiable Englishman who gives a successful Woody Allen imitation, but whose appearance makes him completely unbelievable. He acts like a Jewish neurotic intellectual, but he doesn’t look like one.

What also doesn’t cooperate is the lack of plot and successful jokes. The story has strange jumps and lacks a tension, the jokes are sparse and stale. Side characters appear and disappear again, the tone goes from comic to dramatic without us having to laugh or cry. And the choice for black and white is – except for aesthetic reasons – not really explainable.

Fortunately, there are some curious guest stars, from Donald Trump as Donald Trump, from Leonardo DiCaprio as an actor who remodels girlfriend and hotel room, from Charlize Theron as a horny supermodel. There is also a few successful jokes, but not enough to save this film. A film that is about Allen’s longest at 113 minutes. And about his worst.