This movie is A LOT BETTER than 'Midnight in Paris'

Midnight in Paris is the far stronger film. It's a much warmer, fascinating, and wittier film.

Whatever Works honestly bugged me. It's one of the lesser films in Allen's career and truly the only thing that "works" in the film is Evan Rachel Wood who is infectiously entertaining despite her "adorable idiot" character. Now, I'm very liberal thinking in my way of life but truly one of the things that was annoying about "Whatever Works" is the motto of "Do what makes you happy, whatever works!" only seems to apply to people who share the same artistic urban lifestyle & mindset as Allen does.

The Southern characters were all country bumpkins, secretly unhappy with their "close-minded, homophobic, racist Southern existence" until they "woke up" in Manhattan and embraced the (supposed) free-thinking, artistic, bisexual/homosexual, Democratic existence there that it became happy.

I know Allen really tells films from just his outlook but it was hard for me to embrace the film when what the film proposes is it's message is so opposite of what it's really expressing. Maybe if one of the Southern characters had actually been a happy individual who really loved their simple existence "back home" the film would have been easier to swallow but it didn't.

The film basically says "Whatever Works... as long as you live in Manhattan and don't have a Conservative outlook on life... otherwise you're just an unhappy moron". I'm not a Conservative but I'm not an idiot either so it was hard to really embrace the film once that thought hit me.

Regardless, I enjoyed the film in the end. I love Allen movies because they're real movies with heart (unlike a lot of his indie imitators who feel that wealthy white people sleeping around in NYC is all you need to tell a story) and it's always a treat to see a movie every year that puts the story above any gimmicks. I'm a Woody Allen fan at heart - seen all his films more than than once, even "Anything Else" his worst film by a large margin - but "Midnight In Paris" is the far superior film to "Whatever Works".

There. It's on the Internet. Thus it's official

Yep, definitely better. Though I liked Midnight in Paris too.

"The Love you take is equal to the Love you make" The Beatles.

Mr Stiffy doesn't really have any "range" whatsoever - all his moviefillums pop out form the same place and splash to the ground in approximately the same area. All he can think of to write/film is increasingly smug, faux-deep relationship dramas amongst the rich, ostensibly culturally oh-so-sophisticated bourgeois pricks who keep, to the beat of some 1930's horn-propelled show tune, morbidly moaning about the meaninglessness of the Universe, crack mostly lame jokes that always sound as if they were a part of some well forgotten old stand-up routine and ceaselessly blather on about their feelings and/or pretentiously gush over some artwork. No director I know of has boxed himself in quite like Stiffy; dude has no room at all anymo'. Looks like he don't actually want any, either.


"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

I also liked Midnight in Paris much better. Whatever Works was a forum for Woody Allen to preach his politics, and other views on just about everything. I wasn't interested in that at all!!!