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83The film is a pleasure that doesn't rank with Allen's best but satisfies far more than most American comedies.
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75No more than a beguiling trifle. But in the dog days of summer, it's a perk to wallow in inspired silliness.
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75It's really, really funny.
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75The collision of sleek melodrama and old Woody Allen stand-up routines is at times oddly effective and at other times just odd.
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75It's far from his (Allen) career best, but it's funny and he comes off well.
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70A light-hearted if ghostly murder mystery that for all the contemporary English locations feels like a 1930s studio film including a plot that bears little scrutiny. Along with the delectable Johansson, the film offers fun roles for Allen, Hugh Jackman and Ian McShane.
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70It's the kind of small pleasure that can make you feel intensely grateful.
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70Mr. Allen's invocation of the "Thin Man" films in an interview makes sense, even if he's no William Powell and Ms. Johansson is certainly no Myrna Loy. Scoop was made by someone who understands that what makes the "Thin Man" series enduring isn't whodunit and why, but the way Nick and Nora look at each other as they sip their martinis, Asta nipping at their heels.
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70An odd but agreeable little comedy.
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63Decidedly minor Woody.
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63Johansson is not Allen's new Diane Keaton. She's closer to Mariel Hemingway -- though even Allen couldn't attempt to pull off a romance between his septuagenarian self and a girl in college.
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The first Allen picture since "Sweet and Lowdown" that doesn't leave a bad odor in its wake.
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60The rapport between Allen and Johansson (pretending to be father and daughter) is lively, and the variations on the same old jokes are plentiful.
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60After the accomplished smoothness of "Match Point," it's back to more ragged form in Scoop, despite the almost identical posh settings, and the return of Scarlett Johansson as leading lady.
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Scoop isn't going for complexity. It's a trifle.
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50To see Allen, now 70, trying to reclaim the persona he's been handing off is like watching Willie Mays fall down trying to hit a slow curve during his last season. Woody may go on to direct many great films, but it's time for him to retire Alvy Singer.
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50A marginally funny comedy at best, recycles themes, scenes and even lines from Allen's own old movies - like many of Allen's later efforts.
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50Cobbled together from memorable parts of Allen's own (not to mention Hitchcock's) classics, Scoop doesn't establish its own identity.
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50For the first time, Allen's trademark shtick sounds less like the anxious kvetching of an endearingly neurotic New Yorker and more like the ramblings of a tired, elderly man fumbling for the right words.
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50Scoop is distinctly minor Allen, with less weight to it than one of his old humor doodles in The New Yorker.
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50A blend of lackluster comedy and lazy plotting, the film feels a lot like bad Hitchcock.
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50The differences between the two movies are, first, that Scoop is a comedy and, second, unlike "Match Point," it's not very good, as Allen also returns to pre-Match Point mediocre form.
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50A companion piece to "Match Point" that suffers all the more in comparison.
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50Rather than providing flashes of one-of-a-kind humor, Allen has reached the point where his critical and movie-going fans are humoring him.
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42As it is, the film perpetually teeters on the edge between a functional vehicle and a train wreck, and whenever Allen opens his mouth, he pushes it violently in the latter direction.
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Years ago, when Allen's inimitable comedy style still seemed fresh, Scoop may have joined the ranks of "Sleeper" and "Take the Money and Run" as a comedy classic. Today it provides a pleasant diversion.
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So flat, dull, and off form that it seems to have been conceived in a fog. It not only lacks the verve and energy of Allen's best New York–based work, it feels culturally adrift, like some bewildered tourist trying to read a city map held upside down.
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40At this late stage in a long career, Allen might consider not trying to make films like the early, funny ones. Instead he should aim simply to match "Match Point."
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38What once was a gifted comic's fluid improvisation is now a doddering old man so embarrassing he's uncomfortable to watch, and the surrogate father-daughter needling he has with Johansson is creepy when you realize Woody the director is shooting her seductively in that skintight bathing suit.
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38When Allen revives his plodding "Manhattan Murder Mystery" as the even duller Scoop, I snore.
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30Scoop is about 50 minutes of plot padded with 40 minutes of Woody being Woody.
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30The direction is lazy and the script thoroughly witless, from its token Bergman references to dialogue that suggests a night in borscht-belt hell.
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30This gives nobody, least of all me, any pleasure, but a truth must be faced: Scoop is the worst movie Woody Allen has ever made.
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30Allen is wretched. It is no kind of pleasure to say so, especially with the memory of the good things he has done; but here he simply plunks front and center the fact that he cannot act and never could.
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30Allen doesn't get us to care much about any of the characters here.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 18 out of 22
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Mixed: 0 out of 22
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Negative: 4 out of 22
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BB6Good acting, but a story too simple.
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BrandonS.7
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LindaL.1