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Hollywood Ending (2002)
Runtime: 1 hr 54 mins
Synopsis: In HOLLYWOOD ENDING, Woody Allen stars as Val Waxman, a onetime hot director who now gets fired from deodorant commercials in the frozen north. He is desperate for a comeback, but when he is at last offered a deal--for a $60 million blockbuster--it's from his ex-wife producer, Ellie (Tea... In HOLLYWOOD ENDING, Woody Allen stars as Val Waxman, a onetime hot director who now gets fired from deodorant commercials in the frozen north. He is desperate for a comeback, but when he is at last offered a deal--for a $60 million blockbuster--it's from his ex-wife producer, Ellie (Tea Leoni), and her lover, Hal (Treat Williams), the studio head who had stolen Ellie away from Val ten years earlier. At his agent's (Mark Rydell as Al Hack) urging, Val takes the job, but Val is struck with psychosomatic blindness on the eve of production. Yet he is still determined to direct the picture. HOLLYWOOD ENDING is a return to form for Allen. He is excellent as the fading auteur struggling to find his vision. His dependence on Al and Ellie is both pathetic and hysterical. Leoni and Rydell are outstanding, as is the rest of the eclectic cast, which includes Isaac Mizrahi as a production designer, Debra Messing as Val's chippie girlfriend, George Hamilton as a vain Hollywood tagalong, and Tiffani Thiessen as a sexpot actress. The film is filled with wonderful New York City locations, including Central Park, the Plaza hotel, Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle, Balthazar, and more. HOLLYWOOD ENDING is a funny, poignant look at a filmmaker fighting public and professional scrutiny to craft his art, not unlike what Allen himself has gone through in his career, especially in the 1990s. [More]
Genre: Comedies
Starring: Woody Allen, Téa Leoni, Treat Williams, George Hamilton, Mark Rydell
Reviews
Filled with laughs and missed potential for lots more, the film leaves us happy but maybe wishing for something bigger.
Com seu habitual humor auto-depreciativo e seu imenso talento para a comédia física, Allen cria um filme divertido, mas que jamais se equipara aos seus grandes trabalhos.
For those, like this reviewer, who revere Allen as one of the greats, it’s best that Hollywood Ending be quickly buried.
Que las escenas más graciosas de una película de Woody Allen sean aquellas en las que se da contra una puerta o se cae de una altura es señal de que ya no es lo mismo.
Hollywood Ending, while not quite as lousy as last year's The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, is still fairly mediocre...
...Even if this isn't Woody's best, it provides generally solid entertainment, which is something of a rarity these days from Tinseltown.
It's getting difficult to watch this old dog trying so hard to pull off the same old tricks; Allen is becoming a caricature of himself, a cartoon, before our very eyes.
Woody Allen's latest is an ambling, broad comedy about all there is to love -- and hate -- about the movie biz.
Allen se atreve a atacar, a atacarse y nos ofrece gags que van de la sonrisa a la risa de larga duración
Uneven: great fun in parts, annoying in others, too familiar in some.
A few bright ideas decorated with snappy one-liners are stretched too thin to fill almost two hours.
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