We've seen this kind of May-December setup in many Allen movies, but this one follows a less predictable path and with more amusing secondary characters.
Comment
06/26/09
Whatever Works (2009)
47
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:123
Fresh:58
Rotten:65
Average Rating:5.4/10
Consensus: Based upon a script written in the 1970s, Woody Allen's Whatever Works suffers from a lack of fresh ideas.
Runtime: 1 hr 32 mins
Genre: Comedies
Synopsis: The New York-based humor of Woody Allen and CURB YOUR ENTHUSIAM’s Larry David seems like a natural match, and the pair unite for the first time in this comedy. WHATEVER WORKS follows a rich man... [More]
Starring: Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood, Patricia Clarkson, Ed Begley
Director: Woody Allen
Reviews for Whatever Works
...a sporadically watchable yet hopelessly uneven piece of work...
06/26/09
Stay home and rent one of Allen's better films.
06/26/09
Woody Allen had a nice winning streak going for him, and then he brought in his younger self to screw things up.
06/26/09
Allen and David do stuff in Whatever Works that shouldn't work but does.
06/26/09
Larry David's caustic, neurotic misanthropy fits with Allen's own nebbishy pessimism like onions fit in a knish.
06/25/09
Coming off last year's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the freshest Allen film in more than a decade, Whatever Works plays like a hoary old Broadway stage comedy yanked, reluctantly, into the present.
06/25/09
As Whatever Works creaks along, the attention-getting nastiness of the first half dissipates and it turns into just another Woody Allen overacted sex farce.
06/25/09
Coming off last year's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the freshest Allen film in more than a decade, Whatever Works plays like a hoary old Broadway stage comedy yanked, reluctantly, into the present.
06/25/09
Whatever Works would have only worked if its director had written his trademark self-caricature out of it.
06/25/09
It's as if Allen took a Parisian romantic rondeley and gave it his own New York flavor...[Rachel Evan Wood is] positively endearing.
06/25/09
Larry David is the mind of the enterprise, and Evan Rachel Wood is the heart.
06/25/09
Top CriticWhatever Works, a reported reworking of a 30-year-old script, is overtly old.
06/24/09
Although this film will not write anything new in the Woody Allen history book there is always room for one more feel good movie.
06/22/09
It’s consistently very funny, sharp and observant.
06/22/09
It’s no secret that I am a lifelong Woody Allen fan.
06/22/09
Does little except reinforce the notion that Allen's creative well has long since run dry.
06/22/09
Woody Allen's clumsy, unfunny, preachy homage to secular humanism commits the cardinal sin; it's devoid of humor.
06/19/09
Tepid adult comedy is no Allen masterpiece.
06/19/09
It’s good to have Allen return to the city he grew up in. Can the grown-up Woody come back now, please?
06/19/09
Latest News for Whatever Works
June 18, 2009:
Critics Consensus: Year One Fails To Beget Laughs
This week at the movies, we've got Biblical bloopers (Year One, starring Jack Black and Michael Cera) and an engagement of convenience (The Proposal, starring Sandra Bullock and... More...
May 10, 2009:
Trailer Bulletin: Whatever Works 
Larry David steps in as Woody Allen's latest on-screen surrogate in "Whatever Works," due out June 19. Watch the trailer now! More...
May 10, 2009:
Trailer & Poster review
More...
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