X
- 2016
- PG-13
- Lionsgate Films
- 1 h 36 m
- 2016
- PG-13
- Lionsgate Films
- 1 h 36 m
Summary A young man (Jesse Eisenberg) arrives in Hollywood during the 1930s hoping to work in the film industry. There, he falls in love, and finds himself swept up in the vibrant café society that defined the spirit of the age.
Directed By: Woody Allen
Written By: Woody Allen
- 2016
- PG-13
- Lionsgate Films
- 1 h 36 m
- 2016
- PG-13
- Lionsgate Films
- 1 h 36 m
Café Society
64
6.6
Where to Watch
Summary A young man (Jesse Eisenberg) arrives in Hollywood during the 1930s hoping to work in the film industry. There, he falls in love, and finds himself swept up in the vibrant café society that defined the spirit of the age.
Directed By: Woody Allen
Written By: Woody Allen
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 37 Critic Reviews
64
59% Positive
22 Reviews
22 Reviews
38% Mixed
14 Reviews
14 Reviews
3% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 37 Critic Reviews
64
59% Positive
22 Reviews
22 Reviews
38% Mixed
14 Reviews
14 Reviews
3% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
Romantic, bittersweet and funny as hell, Café Society turns Hollywood inside out, rooting through the superficial tinsel to find the real tinsel. You go away gobsmacked, beaming and happy to be both.
It’s the filmmaking around the writing that casts a particular spell.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 150 User Ratings
6.6
61% Positive
92 Ratings
92 Ratings
29% Mixed
44 Ratings
44 Ratings
9% Negative
14 Ratings
14 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 150 User Ratings
6.6
61% Positive
92 Ratings
92 Ratings
29% Mixed
44 Ratings
44 Ratings
9% Negative
14 Ratings
14 Ratings
At eighty years young, Woody Allen delivers his forty-sixth (yup, you read that right) feature film with Café Society; a bourbon basked narrative feature showcasing the wonderfully vibrant jazz era of the 1930’s, where the magic of the movies is very much alive; nightclubs are bustling with life, traces of the gangster underworld are closer than ever and love is a feeling as whimsical as ever in a parallel tale spanning from Hollywood to New York City.
After forty-six films, you would think, with a director and writer as aged as most of our grandparents, the dialogue and writer of such an iconic filmmaker would lose his touch, but Allen proves his newest feature is as fresh, fun and fantastic as could be. Self-aware and self-absorbed as ever, the auteur extraordinaire showcases some of his most subtle and subdued screenplay to date, focusing mostly on performance from his very young cast and indulging in the beauty of a lively era within the very social elite of Hollywood and New York City.
Like any good Allen film, the story follows a very unsure and adventurous young man by the name of Bobby Dorfman, played perfectly by the nerdy and always loveable Jesse Eisenberg. Bobby, who has chosen for a change of scenery from his native New York City life, decides to chance life on a whim, and join his highly successful and famed uncle Phil Stern (Steve Carell), a Hollywood agent and grande opportunist for a lavish life in Hollywood. Reluctant to really give his nephew a chance, Uncle Phil caves and leaves Bobby in the hands of his angelic and innocently beautiful secretary and assistant Vonnie, played elegantly by Kristen Stewart. Taken by her beauty at first site, Bobby and Vonnie begin experiencing the city of angels through the eyes of glamour and glitz, essentially discrediting the city and its inhabitants as a whole, and wishing for a life that is half Hollywood, and half urban paradise.
As the relationship between Vonnie and Bobby intensifies, despite Vonnie having a secretive relationship with another married man, the two share some of the most memorable meet-cute dates seen this year on screen.
The heart of Café Society relies heavily on the relationship and chemistry between Eisenberg and Stewart, who, luckily for audiences, have played love interests twice before in Adventureland and American Ultra. By now, while watching Café Society, one of the most frustrating elements of the film is why the two stars haven’t began dating outside of the narrative of the films they star in. Eisenberg’s quirk matched with the mysteriousness and nonchalant attitude of Stewart, make the two and quintessential non-Hollywood/Hollywood couple.
As life complicates itself, as all matters of the heart do, Bobby soon finds himself back in the big Apple, eventually succumbing to his big brother Ben (Corey Stoll) and managing a somewhat legitimate business in Le Tropical, a nightclub owned by Ben, among other very illegal and gangster business endeavours. Stoll, who dons a full head of hair as the fiery and ruthless gangster brother to Bobby, brings forth the charm and wit he did as Ernest Hemingway in Allen Midnight In Paris. An Allen alum, Stoll provides the film with some of its most expected comedy, yet is pitch-perfect as the tough guy older brother who knows no life other than the life of the streets.
Allen, who uses many of the same actors over in his films, Stoll twice, Eisenberg twice, Posey, Sirico and company, relies on his actors to deliver some of his most entertaining, fun and light-hearted material to date. Café Society is a fun, summerlicious filled romantic comedy with perfect instances of light-hearted dialogue and narrative that uses the beautiful jazz music as a mosaic of forbidden love and second chances.
While Café Society may not be the huge commercial success of other summer blockbuster films, the film is easily one of my favourite films of the year, delivering a true cinematically entrancing experience, much like Allen’s Midnight In Paris.
If there is one thing I would recommend this summer season, its to make sure to watch this film by any means necessary. Café Society proves again that, like many good comedies, most are written by sadistic comedy writers, and while Allen’s newest is far from sadistic, the film is an examined portrayal of an era of the golden days of cinema that brings back the golden, and leaves the rust behind. Sure, Allen can be completely self-absorbed with his films, making sure his unique cinematic voice is heard and quirkiness felt wholeheartedly, but, regardless of all that, I absolutely fell in love with this film. And while love is not rational, you fall, and lose control, which is the exact same feeling I had when leaving the cinema for this film.
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Isn't simply great having an amusing intelligent adult film every year by the hands of a trusted director not bothered with large production, but always with a handful of talented actors doing the best to deliver the best performance like on a actor school? how great it is to see popular action, chick-flicks, comedy series actors doing something one may think is reserved for just a few? Just a remind; not every Woody movie needs to be a big event - he's been doing one every year. Relax and enjoy!
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The movie isn’t particularly hard to figure out and doesn’t try to be. Its charms lie more in what the actors make of characters that could have been cliches (or, if you’re in a kinder mood, archetypes) and its gorgeous look.
Wispy and familiar in its themes and humorous strokes, Café Society benefits from an exceptionally adept cast led by Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart and Steve Carell, as well as from a luminous glow that emphasizes both the old Hollywood nostalgia and the story’s basis in dreams and artifice.
Eisenberg avoids, for the most part, doing a Woody Allen impersonation, but his bumbling guilelessness is wearing and Stewart seems out of place, unable to ever quite get over being Kristen Stewart in a Woody Allen movie. In fact, both young leads seem nervous to have been invited and often appear simply pleased to be there.
Come for the sophisticated charm and intoxicating wit suggested by the term “café society.” Stay for the rote charms and recycled bons mots offered up by Woody Allen’s umpteenth movie, a decidedly lesser entry in the director’s vast catalog but, as with all Allen movies, a cut above most everything else that passes for comedy these days.
This is as decrepit and tone-deaf as any movie he’s ever made, a corpse of a period piece, production-designed to the hilt, distractedly directed, a failure that hints at The End of Woody.
Enjoyed every minute of it. What a great cast! Jesse Eisenberg, Kirsten Stewart, Steve Carell, and Blake Lively are all just terrific in this delightful 1930s period piece. I thought Corey Stoll was particularly good as the gangster brother. And it was especially good to see Jeannie Berlin again as Rose Dorfman, the mother of Jesse Eisenberg's character. You may remember her as the spurned wife in the original 1972 "Heartbreak Kid" opposite the inimitable Charles Grodin. (I'm glad to say that gem of a movie has turned up on TV again recently after a long absence.) Sari Lennick does a great job as the sister Evelyn. Stunning costumes, gorgeous scenery, wonderful music, and a fun story: what more could you want? Woody Allen narrates.
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Café Society é um bom filme, tecnicamente impecável com atuações decentes e uma direção precisa, porém, perde o ritmo e peca ao interromper bruscamente o desenvolvimento do longa para dar lugar a uma espécie de filme quase diferente com outra locação e personagens.
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I liked this as a fan of the style and music, but the uneven script had the lead playing an unwarranted range that Eisenberg just could not handle, and there was a distinct lack of chemistry between him and Stewart. All the other actors seemed more interesting! Carrel had some gravitas, the sister and husband and parents looked and acted much more the part of thirties' characters. Story gets a bit funnier and more dramatic in the last half, but still, oddly unsatisfying. In Woody's current movies, there is a point where the husbands are mercilessly lying to their wives as they embrace... a creepy commentary on the the value of matrimony that he keeps repeating. At first I got a sense maybe he's trying to play it for laughs but it happens so often, I distinctly feel like it has a confessional role in Woody's life. Kind of tiring.
GORGEOUS to look at tho.
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Café Society is definitely the proof that the Woody Allen we used to know is gone. With few successes in the past years (Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Match Point and Blue Jasmine) and too many failures (I gave up with Magic in the Moonlight, didn’t see the one from last year, but reconsider another opportunity for this one), Café Society is one more from the bunch. Boring story, nonexistent plot, flat and simple-minded characters, terrible cast and awful performances. The script is classic of Woody Allen, but it gave us nothing new, just the irony, paranoia and false superiority of all the previous works; and frankly, that’s not enough anymore. Times have changed, the viewer is more sophisticated and used to clever and demanding plots, but Allen is the same old man, refusing to admit his mistakes.
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If Bobbie's character was supposed to be a direct impersonation of Woody Allen, then his casting and performance were spot on, right down to an utter absence of sexual charisma and the whiny neuroses we've all come to hate after being hammered with it, over and over again, in most of Allen's films. If this wasn't enough to destroy any chance of this film being even mildly entertaining, then Allen's narration buried it in concrete as permanently as Ben's victims.
This was a total indulgence piece with yet another reworking of the now patent New York vs. L.A. dilemma. Since Allen is clearly trying to hold on to something he has only actually possessed sporadically in his entire career, and has now taken to churning out one mediocre film after another, he's a great candidate for forced retirement. Give us a break, Woody, and at least allow us to remember your works of genius with appreciation instead of regret.
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Production Company
Gravier Productions,
Perdido Productions,
FilmNation Entertainment
Release Date Jul 15, 2016
Duration 1 h 36 m
Rating PG-13
Tagline Anyone who is anyone will be seen at Café Society.
Awards
St. Louis Film Critics Association, US
• 1 Nomination
San Diego Film Critics Society Awards
• 1 Nomination
Golden Eagle Awards, Russia
• 1 Nomination
