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Year One
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Hollywood Ending
EMAILPRINTDreamWorks Distribution LLC

Mixed or average reviews
Based on 37 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 6 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by: Woody Allen
Directed by: Woody Allen
Release Date:
Theatrical: May 3, 2002
DVD: September 17, 2002
Running Time: 114 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
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)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Anything Else Cassandra's Dream Celebrity Crimes and Misdemeanors Deconstructing Harry Hannah and Her Sisters Manhattan Match Point Melinda and Melinda Mighty Aphrodite Scoop Small Time Crooks Sweet and Lowdown The Curse of the Jade Scorpion
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
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...
New York Daily News Jami Bernard
A bouquet of snappy one-liners and disarming nuttiness.
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.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
A beautifully shot film with a funny French-twist ending.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Chris Fujiwara
A small film, but its ease and grace are virtues that can't be overrated.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
It's a brilliant concept, one of Allen's finest. Love the concept, baby. But the execution is, well, average.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
It might not be good enough to make you laugh consistently, but Hollywood Ending looks good enough to eat.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Dennis Lim
The central conceit is Allen's most amusing since "Bullets Over Broadway."
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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?
Read Full Review >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.
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
For Woody, it's looking more and more like the end of his days of whine and neurosis.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
It feels old, tired and given-up-on, maybe three drafts shy of minimal production level.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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]
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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
You know a romantic comedy is in trouble when you root for the hero not to get the girl.
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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
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.
Billy M. gave it an 8:
Woody Allen's underrated masterpiece. I still don't think I'd care to be friends with him, but he made me laugh out loud a lot.
Eric S. gave it a 6:
It's got a hilarious storyline, and a charm about it that can't help but bring a jolly smirk to your face. But it's not as good as Woody's last two efforts, "Small Time Crooks," and the woefully unappreciated "Curse Of The Jade Scorpion." Woody began making his films audacious, comic, immature, and weird--but good. He then spun into dark comedies, deep character studies. His movies now seem to be Woody making an effort to stop being so mysterious--he's making good movies, just different good movies. I like them.
Robert H. gave it a 0:
Woody you should seriously think about including Judge Gammerman in your next picture. He certainly can liven up the dialogue.
James L. gave it a 3:
Really disappointing with very few laughs and no one character that I really gave a damn about.
