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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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Hollywood Ending
DreamWorks Distribution LLC
FILM:
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for some drug references and sexual material
Starring
Woody Allen,
George Hamilton,
Téa Leoni,
Debra Messing,
Mark Rydell,
Treat Williams,
and
Tiffani-Amber Thiessen
Allen stars as Val Waxman, a two time Oscar winner turned wash-up, neurotic director in desperate need of a comeback. (DreamWorks)
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Woody Allen
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Woody Allen
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: September 17, 2002
Video: September 17, 2002
Theatrical: May 3, 2002
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
114 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
75
New York Daily News
Jami Bernard
A bouquet of snappy one-liners and disarming nuttiness.
75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
His persona clicks, the physical comedy amuses, and its comic vision is tantalizing enough to make us suspect the Old Master still may have at least one masterpiece in him trying to get out.
75
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
A beautifully shot film with a funny French-twist ending.
75
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
Not perfect, and neither are life or the movies. But you'd have to be blind yourself not to relish its qualities or laugh at its barbs.
75
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
This is an excellent comedy, and the fact that it's made by a filmmaker with even better movies on his resume is nothing to hold against it.
75
Boston Globe
Chris Fujiwara
A small film, but its ease and grace are virtues that can't be overrated.
75
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
The movie is Allen's most successful in years, even if you don't see it as a self-made commentary on his own career. Credit goes less to the comic dialogue than to the razor-sharp performances of an excellent cast.
75
USA Today
Mike Clark
Woody Allen is good for his funniest screen romp in a while, thanks to a few evenly spaced standout scenes of laugh-out-loud intensity.
70
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
It's a brilliant concept, one of Allen's finest. Love the concept, baby. But the execution is, well, average.
63
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
There's a mean little Hollywood satire squirreled away within Hollywood Ending, but you have to look hard to find it.
63
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
It might not be good enough to make you laugh consistently, but Hollywood Ending looks good enough to eat.
63
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
I liked the movie without loving it. It's not great Woody Allen, like "Sweet and Lowdown" or "Bullets Over Broadway," but it's smart and sly, and the blindness is an audacious idea.
60
New York Magazine
Peter Rainer
At one point, Val bemoans how stupid the country is, how dumbed-down everything has become. Allen's new movie is far from dumb, but it has an air of abdication about it.
60
The New York Times
A.O. Scott
Probably the worst thing you can say about Hollywood Ending is that it has one: it turns out that Mr. Allen wasn't being ironic after all, he just made a comedy that feels ironclad.
60
Village Voice
Dennis Lim
The central conceit is Allen's most amusing since "Bullets Over Broadway."
58
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
It has all the raw materials for greatness -- a brilliant concept, a sharp cast, the jokes -- and still doesn't come together. You could do a lot worse than Hollywood Ending, but you could also do better.
50
Time
Richard Corliss
Is comedy a young man's game, like skateboarding or sex? Writing jokes, creating droll characters -- these take ambition, ingenuity and energy, and after decades of devotion to this voracious muse, a fellow can get pooped.
50
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Keith Phipps
The best thing about the movie is its premise: It's a good idea, taken from before Allen's recent losing streak, but it's stretched too thin for its own good.
50
Variety
Todd McCarthy
For those always on the lookout for the "funny" Allen, this one definitely has its moments, but too much of the picture is flat, dispiriting and frankly unbelievable in fundamental ways that defy the granting of poetic license.
50
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Offers slim pickings for viewers, regardless of whether they're fans of Woody Allen or not. And I'm sure the French will love it.
50
Austin Chronicle
Kimberley Jones
That's the ultimate cheat in this pleasant, but trifling affair: Allen has cheated himself out of an actress (Leoni) that could have been Diane Keaton's heir.
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
More than merely stale and dated, Hollywood Ending seems lazy and careless -- the structure is loose to the point of crumbling.
50
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
The overarching joke, of course, is that most movies are so lousy they might as well have been made by blind men anyway. Hollywood Ending is only mediocre, but you may leave wondering, what's Allen's excuse?
50
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
It's thanks to her (Leoni) that we stay tuned to Mr. Allen's comic premise long after it has gone from delightfully outrageous to off-puttingly preposterous.
42
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
For Woody, it's looking more and more like the end of his days of whine and neurosis.
40
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
It feels old, tired and given-up-on, maybe three drafts shy of minimal production level.
40
Film Threat
Tim Merrill
Serves as more proof, as if any were needed, that Allen desperately needs to devote more time to polishing his scripts, and less to heedlessly banging out one film a year, year in and year out.
40
Slate
David Edelstein
You can see the potential, and you can also see the places where Allen didn't (couldn't?) rise to the occasion.
40
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Funny but perilously slight.
40
The New Yorker
David Denby
Has its satirical charms, but it repeats itself remorselessly, and it has no emotional center. We are so distant from Val that when he gets his sight back we don't feel a thing. [20 May 2002, p.114]
40
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
He (Allen) seems to have forgotten that comedy is all about timing, letting individual scenes meander -- often to accommodate his own stammering monologues -- and giving viewers far too much downtime in which to consider the staleness of many of the film's gags.
30
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
No director in the history of moviemaking has expended so much effort in the service of drying up and blowing off the landscape.
30
Newsweek
David Ansen
You know a romantic comedy is in trouble when you root for the hero not to get the girl.
30
New Times (L.A.)
Andy Klein
What's particularly scary about Hollywood Ending, however, is that its flaws are exactly the sort of problems that often afflict aging directors, flaws that we've never seen in Allen before -- bad comic timing, slack pacing, an unsteady control of tone, a reliance on jokes that have long since become clichés.
20
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
I only laughed once here, at a Treat Williams reaction shot; the rest of the time I was trying to figure out why Allen made this movie.
20
LA Weekly
Manohla Dargis
It isn't only that there is a dearth of ideas in Hollywood Ending -- however hateful, "Deconstructing Harry" was at least about something -- it's that the whole thing is almost entirely devoid of pleasure.
20
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
It's as sad and painful to report as it is to experience, but Hollywood Ending makes the conclusion inescapable: Woody Allen has become his own worst enemy.
 The average user rating for this movie is 5.8 (out of 10) based on 6 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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