A young artist (Jason Biggs) struggling with his career and his muse has problems with his live-in girlfriend (Christina Ricci) and an obsessive teacher (Woody Allen) with a history of mental illness.
The script is quite entertaining as it plays with the idea of writing and artistic creation. But the plot itself is mildly annoying and seriously dull.
"Anything Else" represents low ebb for the comic filmmaker famous for transmuting the work of Ingmar Bergman into New York centric comedies full of neurosis based humor.
The trouble is, Biggs is not nearly as good at this kind of role as Allen. For that matter, Allen is not very convincing as a gun-toting survivalist, either.
There's a lot of truth in the screenplay, and, combined with Ricci's top-notch, can't-take-your- eyes-off-her-when- she's-on-screen performance, this gives the movie a strong spine.
Who knows what sense an American Pie-digging, Woodman-ignorant undergrad might make of the canned rhythms, the trilobite-era one-liners, the awkward declarative dialogue, the Catskills-resort frames of reference, the freshman philosophy.
Hollywood Reporter
September 21, 2003
There is nothing to set this work apart from any number of mediocre Allen films.
Cinema em Cena
January 05, 2004
Seria ótimo se Allen passasse a dedicar mais tempo ao desenvolvimento de suas idéias. É melhor ver um bom filme a cada dois ou três anos do que sofrer uma decepção todo ano.
None of this adds up to much of a movie; it's more like a filmed hodgepodge of not-fully- thought-out ideas and one-liners and small shards of jaundiced polemic.
