Hollywood Ending (2002) User Reviews

I thought it was funny

[mattymatt4ever · 7/10 · 18 March 2003]

Before the film came out, I read some reviews saying that they felt Woody was back in top form, but now I'm reading reviews that say otherwise. I guess many people feel that in the case of a greatly talented filmmaker like Woody, after wooing audiences with his earlier works like "Annie Hall" and "Manhattan," there's nowhere left to go but down. So whenever people bash his films, they don't bash them in the same way they would the next SNL-inspired dud. They bash them even more brutally simply because he's Woody and they can't help but expect more from him.

"Hollywood Ending" is no gem, with moments that obviously drag, but I felt it worked. It's an excellent premise for a farcical comedy, and it played out fluently. My only criticism about the "blind" element of the film dealt with Woody's performance. Each scene where he talks to someone, he purposely turns away from that person. He was obviously trying way too hard to stress the fact that his character's blind (I guess in case the audience somehow forgot halfway through). People who are blind actually have a strong sense of hearing. Like the comic book character of Daredevil, their other four senses are heightened. When they're first faced with the blindness, it's hard to cope, but after a short while they get used to it.

Like most of Woody's films, the cast is an ensemble of multi-talented actors who each contribute more than their own five cents into the work. There was even an funny unbilled cameo by Isaac Mizrahi. A lot of people project snobbery upon Woody's recent work, but I happened to enjoy this movie very much, and the same goes with "Small-Time Crooks" and "Curse of the Jade Scorpion." As long as you don't proceed with gigantic expectations, you should have a lot of fun.

My score: 7 (out of 10)

Good Woody

[rmax304823 · 7/10 · 16 May 2003]

This one, unlike many of Woody's pieces over the past decade or so, is neither a failed comedy nor a dullish drama. It's pretty funny all the way through and lacks any pretense of being otherwise. I won't go into the story except to repeat that Woody is a film director here, given a last chance, trying to direct a remake of a 1940s film. He suddenly suffers from hysterical blindness and must make the movie without seeing any of the performances, the rushes, the production design, the promotional material, or anything else. His agent is the only one in on the secret. They enlist the help of a Chinese translator to act as Woody's guide around the set and the rest of the world, but the translator is fired by the Chinese cameraman. So the agent must spill the beans to Woody's separated wife who then acts as her husband's eyes. It all ends happily.

This is a consistently amusing movie. There is even the occasional pratfall that hasn't been seen in a Woody movie for a long time. There are, to be sure, serious undertones that surface from time to time, but they lie lightly on the narrative line. One of these is the still-fuzzy relationship between Woody and his separated wife, Tia Leoni, who is engaged now to Treat Williams, grown bulky and authoritative. The other theme deals with Woody's relationship with his son, Tony. Tony has joined a rock band, if that's the term. His hair is a sickly dark green piled up in an improbable sculpture atop his head, like a Yurok Indian's. He eat rats on stage and has changed his name from Tony Waxman to ScumbagX. Tony once threw his father down a flight of stairs. But, "That was then," says Tony, easily forgiving himself, "and it was stupid." Tony doesn't have the funniest lines in the movie but in one way he gives the most interesting performance in the movie, because he's just about the only actor (not including the two Chinese) who doesn't speak the way Woody does. The nervous mannerisms we've come to recognize are all here in everyone else, and they're funny too, because they fit the characters so well. (They were appropriate to his character in "Broadway Danny Rose," too. And as they weren't when Branaugh used them in "Celebrity.") Here, just about everybody's got them. Hardly a sentence is completed with someone else interrupting or the sentence itself wandering off into space, lost, having forgotten its own beginning. I didn't bother to do a content analysis of the dialog but if "y'know?" isn't the most common utterance I'd be kind of surprised. Stuttering is endemic to the cast. People ask, "Whaddaya mean?" And somebody replies, "Whaddaya mean, whaddo I mean?" Hands flutter as if with lives of their own. The blind Woody praises a promotional poster for the film while admiring its blank back.

He himself is older here, noticeably, but not depressingly. His hair is now gray and his bald patch more pronounced. But he's in good shape and his wit is keen. He plays the blind man in a hilariously exaggerated fashion -- never looking directly at the person he's conversing with, constantly holding his open palms up in front of his chest as if carrying an invisible pumpkin. A writer from "Esquire" tells him fawningly how much she's enjoyed his work while taking notes for a tell-all scandalous hatchet-job about everyone involved in the production, kind of like the number Lillian Ross did on Hemingway for the New Yorker profile or on Huston's "Red Badge of Courage". Unluckily, she wears the same perfume as his wife and, thinking he's talking with Leoni, Allen tells her everything. And it isn't as if the whole film depends on the odd one-liner, although those one-liners are there too. (After regaining his sight, Woody views for the first time the footage he's shot, and he looks stricken. "Call Doctor Kavorkian," he says slowly.) The premise is absurd, of course. No one could pass himself off as sighted under these conditions. But joke follows joke unerringly, sometimes building on one another. Before an important meeting with the film's producer, his wife takes him to the guy's apartment to familiarize him with the layout. This way, you see, he will know where the chair is located, the desk, and the other items of furniture. She tries to be as helpful as possible. While he's wringing his hands in the doorway, she paces off distances in the apartment, telling him, "Okay, now you enter through the door and walk four steps. Then the chair is on your right. But, okay, if Hal is sitting there, you'll take two more steps. Now you turn to the left because that's where the sofa is, but watch out for the lamp." Woody anxiously repeats her instructions -- "watch out for the lamp, and the sofa is, two more paces, no four -- okay -- and then turn left." The instructions become impossibly complicated and confusing and Woody is gripping his head trying to remember them, until everything begins to break down, including the editing, and we get sequences that might have come out of that movie in which Danny Kaye has to remember that "the poison is in the pellet of the picture of the peacock and the flagon with the dragon has the brew that is true." Meanwhile Woody is stumbling around with those forearms stretched before him and a blank gaze, one of Baron von Frankenstein's rejects. During the actual interview he manages to sit on the lamp. You really ought to see this one if you are in the mood for laughs because it's a thoroughly successful comedy.

I got a big kick out of this film

[blanche-2 · 8/10 · 15 February 2013]

I admit to being a big Woody Allen fan; when I was in college, I went to a Woody Allen movie - Play it Again, Sam - and all around me, people were laughing like hyenas. I had no idea what was funny. Now I don't know how I ever thought that.

"Hollywood Ending" is a 2002 film from the prolific Allen, and he gives it to Hollywood but good. He plays a neurotic, hypochondriacal film director named Val who can't get arrested thanks to being so difficult. But in a conference about a film, The City that Never Sleeps, his ex-wife Ellie (Tea Leoni), in charge of development, is positive that he would be the best man for the job. She is shot down by everyone, including her current producer boyfriend Yeager (Treat Williams) but she manages to convince him to at least meet with Val.

Val loathes Yeager and he doesn't want to have anything to do with him or Ellie but he's just come home from a Canadian winter shoot for a deodorant commercial, from which he was fired, and he's desperate. His long-suffering agent Al (Mark Rydell) gets him the deal, and Val is hired.

The night before the shoot, Val calls Al, in the middle of a Seder, and demands he come over. He's blind. Al gets him to a doctor but there's nothing wrong with Val's eyes. He can't lose the job, so Al goes with him to the set, but is thrown out by Ed (George Hamilton). Al suggests that he find a confidant who can see him through the film. Since Val has demanded a Chinese cameraman who doesn't speak English, the translator needs to be around, so he helps Val out. But Val is going to need a lot more help than the translator.

I found the premise and the whole movie quite funny, with some great dialogue and good acting from everyone, including Debra Messing, who plays Val's current bimbo girlfriend, whom he casts in the film.

The movie would have been better if Allen had actually attempted to cover up the fact that Val is blind rather than acting just like a blind man. The fact that no one noticed is ridiculous. When someone speaks to him, he looks the opposite way, and he stares straight ahead, and he needs help walking.

All in all, I really enjoyed it. It's not his best; it's not his worst. Some very funny scenes and filled with wit.

Hilarious

[Movie_Man 500 · 2 July 2003]

Some of the one liners here are so hysterical, you will think about them long after the movie ends and still roar. This is a very funny movie and plays right into the audience expectation Allen is mocking in his script. After the war in Iraq, Woody's comment about "Thank God the French exist" is even more amusing than when he first wrote it. Yes Thank God for the French, they've made some funny movies too. And Thank God for people like Woody Allen. The world needs him. I love how his running trademark showing him with younger women still continues to upset certain members of both the public and critical elite. I think at his age, Allen can pretty much do and write what he wants. Personally, I enjoy the fantasy; it's a sly little dig against the morals of American culture, especially in the Ashcroft/Bush JR era. Older men and younger women have been around forever, and Woody definitely isnt the only one experiencing this condition, so get over yourselves, uptighters, and learn to laugh at life. The dumbing down of society (referred to often in the screenplay) is highly evident after the negative reactions this has received. It's only a movie; it's not the end of the world. You either get it or you don't.

Hollywood Ending (2002) ***

[JoeKarlosi · 7/10 · 14 January 2009]

I liked when Woody Allen went back to comedy and starred in his own films again during this period. He started showing his age in the 00's, but in this film he's still a lot of fun and capable of being a physical comic. It's a story about a real down on his luck has-been of a director (Allen) who's so desperate that he's reduced to filming commercials in Canada. So he has no choice but to accept an offer to direct a big movie that could put him back on top - the problem is, the two producers are his ex-wife (Tea Leoni) and her new fiancé who stole her from Allen (Treat Williams). Right before production all the stress gets to Woody and he experiences psychosomatic blindness and has to direct the whole movie without being able to see. He can't blow this important opportunity and has to fake his way through without letting anyone but his trustworthy agent and his Asian cameraman's interpreter know what's happening.

This is a sure-fire recipe for laughs, and it mostly delivers. Tea Leoni is perfect for the role of Woody's long-suffering ex who's stuck working with him again under such touchy circumstances. I also enjoy Mark Rydell as his dedicated agent and mentor. Debra Messing plays another in a long line of ditzy young girlfriends who can't seem to resist shacking up with the 66-year-old Allen. The one flaw is that the movie goes on a tad long, and maybe the gag wears thin by the home stretch. *** out of ****

Woody Allen - A True Legend!

[namashi_1 · 7/10 · 22 May 2010]

While watching 'Hollywood Ending', I re-confirmed the fact that there is, there was and there will be only one Woody Allen. The Legendary Film Personality seems to be having a blast in this Funny Flick about a Has-Been Filmmaker who decides to direct a film for his ex, but a psychosomatic ailment strikes him blind just before production is set to begin.!

'Hollywood Ending' is meant for all, it's funny and way to Filmy. Allen is like never-before! He's astounding after he turns blind, he captures the show and like how! I am in awe of him. He can Write, Direct and Act, with such style, such ease and such understanding! He's one of those talents that remain as Legends till you watch Cinema!

Watch 'Hollywood Ending' for Woody Allen, he sinks his teeth into the departments he puts himself into. Reccmended to all!

Another failed Comedy from Woody Allen

[panicwatcher · 6/10 · 10 August 2003]

The good Woody Allen comedies are packed with intelligent jokes and have characters you like and can relate to. This movie misses on both counts. There is very little that is funny in this movie unless you like Woody's exaggerated portrayal of a blind man and everyone else's unbelievable failure to notice that Woody is blind. The attempts at slapstick comedy based on the problems of a fumbling blind man are embarrassingly bad.

But the bigger problem is that Woody's character is so unlikeable. He plays a bad director that treats Tea Leoni badly. It is hard to understand how they could have ever been married or why she would ever consider going back to someone so stupid, untalented, and insensitive.

The final problem is that this movie drags on much too long. There is an incredible amount of pointless dialog that is uninteresting and does not advance the plot.

The only part of the movie that works for me is the scene with Woody's estranged son, "Scumbag X". Scumbag is an interesting original character whose intelligence is in stark contrast to all the idiots that populate the rest of the movie. That scene had my favorite Allen line: "I love you, Scumbag".

Funniest Woody since 'Bullets over Broadway'

[paulaschilton · 7/10 · 27 July 2004]

This is easily Woody's funniest since 'Bullets over Broadway' (1994), and his warmest film since then, as well. It's also his best film since at least 'Sweet and Lowdown' (1999), with excellent performances from Woody (who's frankly been coasting in many of his recent films) as well as Tea Leoni and Mark Rydell as his agent Al. It could have done with some more biting stuff about Hollywood, and it runs too long by about 20 minutes, but it's a lot of fun and well worth seeing. I'm looking forward now to 'Anything Else', which I still haven't seen. Hopefully, this signals an upturn in the quality of Woody's films. I was getting very nervous there for a while with crap like 'Small Time Crooks' and 'Curse of the Jade Scorpion'.

Why do you have to see this movie?

[Mendelovich · 10/10 · 18 May 2007]

I am overwhelmed with the modern movies' aspiration to rely on new fashions. Thank God we have Woody Allen as a beacon of tradition and craftsmanship in the domain of movie-making. The movie is extremely funny and lacks all the nuisances which plague newer ones in order to make them more appealing to the main core audience nowadays: male teenagers. Woody Allen plays the role of an over-the-hill director which undertakes the mission of making a movie against the wishes of its producer.He receives a blow when he becomes blind right before the beginning of the shooting. The plot revolves around Allen's blindness, which is guarded as a secret by his agent, and the process of the filming with a blind director. I do not have to mention the many a hilarious moments this situation produces.

A One-Joke and Simple Woody Allen's Comedy

[claudio_carvalho · 7/10 · 15 May 2004]

Val Waxman (Woody Allen) is a temperamental filmmaker, who has not directed a film for ten years. Although being and excellent director, the studios do not hire him, since he is also a troublemaker. His former wife Ellie (Téa Leoni) is dating Hal Jaeger (Treat Williams), a powerful executive of Galaxie, and she convinces him to invite Val for a US$ 60 millions project about New York. Val presently lives with Lori Fox (Debra Messing), but is still in love with Ellie, and becomes jealous with the situation. However, he knows that this work is his last chance in Hollywood and he accepts the challenge. On the first day of shooting, he develops a kind of psychosomatic blindness, and gets in serious troubles. This predictable and naive romantic comedy is based on one-joke only. I am a huge fan of Woody Allen, but I found this work below his average. Anyway it is a good entertainment. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): `Dirigindo no Escuro' (`Directing in the Dark', but also `Driving in the Dark'- `dirigindo' has double meaning in Portuguese)

One liners steal the show

[Quinoa1984 · 5/10 · 11 May 2002]

Allen is a director, and here he plays one as well, who becomes psycho-psematically blind right before he starts shooting his latest picture for 60 million dollars. And so, his agent tags along to make sure he stays on the picture in one piece. The one liners here are classic Allen as there is not one scene that doesn't have them and while they don't all work, when they do it's laugh out loud. The film is also a good dish for movie buffs. The ending itself, by the way, is absolutely appropriate. Favorite lines- the black plague (he calls this as a disease in an early restaurant scene), call Dr. Kevorkian (after the first screening of the movie), and- you should put a full page ad in the DGA cause you'll never stop working (after Thiessen shows Allen her assets). A-

A conformist movie about non-conformism (WATCH IT AGAIN!)

[cristineagoe · 10/10 · 28 June 2003]

I really don't understand why your users rated this movie as a mediocre one (when I write this, it has 6.3 points). This is a superb irony on the irrational fashion that runs through the Western Elite (European and American). It's a game between rational and irrational, under the pretext of a blind director who initially wants to make a nonconformist movie and he ends by making it "per accidens". "Thanks God the French exist!" says Woody Allen at a certain moment. Well, we should really thank God for that. The French have style. The French have art (or used to have). What came under my eyes very rapidly was that, although Woody Allen movie is surprisingly commercial, very easy to understand from a superficial perspective, it is a movie about postmodernism, about how art is made. Tristan Tzara, my compatriot and the initiator of the Suprarealist movement called DADAISM would have been very enthusiastic over the movie in the movie (which, a propos, is never shown to us!!!). You should watch this movie with your eyes and ears and with your mind open, because you'll see something else.

Woody's Movie Movie: in-joke bonbons for long time fans

[EThompsonUMD · 7/10 · 17 November 2002]

Woody Allen's movies have always been saturated with references to other movies and with self-referential commentary on the artistic process, but 'Hollywood Ending' is his first thoroughgoing 'movie movie.' From its credit sequence, accompanied by '30s tunes like 'Hooray for Hollywood' and 'Goin' Hollywood,' to its not quite Hollywood ending, 'Hollywood Ending' is Allen's most complete skewering of the American movie-making business and his own place therein.

Probably the film's weakest element is Allen's own acting, always limited to a few comic tics, but lately reduced to non-stop spastic arm movements and a stammering speech that borders on post-stroke aphasia. His self-casting in comic romantic lead roles, once a charming anti- type element of his persona, has become increasingly grotesque as the age of his leading ladies - in art as in life - has descended from his own ballpark to half and now a third of that. Nevertheless, in 'Hollywood Ending,' Allen is so perfectly cast as has-been 'auteur' Val Waxman these weaknesses are easy to overlook.

In most respects, 'Hollywood Ending' is very smoothly structured. For instance, the film's crosscut opening scenes economically set up both the film-making plot and its love triangle. Val's former wife Ellie (Tea Leonie) lobbies her new love interest Hal Jaeger, the head honcho at Galaxy Pictures (Treat Williams), to hire Val to direct a new studio 'property' set in New York. Prompted by her own ambition, a little guilt, and what turns out to be a lingering soft spot for Val, Ellie fends off objections that Val is a demanding, budget-overrunning 'artiste' with the argument that he's perfect for the movie because (like Allen himself) 'the streets of New York are in his marrow.' She also counters the claim that 'Val's a raving, incompetent, psychotic' with the first of many familiar Allen backhanded quips: 'He is NOT incompetent!' Meanwhile, we cut to Val, now reduced to doing a deodorant commercial in a driving Canadian blizzard. On the phone to his live-in would be starlet girlfriend (Debra Messing) he kvetches in perfect Allen pitch: 'I've got two Oscars. Up here you don't need Oscars. You need Antlers.'

After Val returns to New York, his smarmy agent (charmingly played by Mark Rydell) convinces him to meet with Hal and Ellie despite Val's contempt for the first ('he's a Philistine') and betrayed anger at the other ('she's a Quisling). Val's approach-avoidance conflict is expressed in a witty variation of Allen's favorite Groucho Marx joke: 'I'd kill for this job, but the people I want to kill are the ones offering me the job.' Val eventually does 'take a meeting' with the studio people, including Hal, Ellie, and a wisecracking associate producer (George Hamilton). Through Val's hapless participation in discussions about the film's box office potential and 'demographics,' Allen manages some telling satiric jabs at Hollywood commercialism. 'Hal,' Ellie tells Val in a follow-up private meeting, 'has made some very financially successful American films.' To which Val responds: 'That should tell you all you need to know about him. He's the white line down the middle of the road.'

Along with sardonic comments on the movie industry, Allen mixes in much of his familiar shtick like hypochondria jokes (Ellie blames their marriage breakup on Val's fears of such imaginary illnesses as black plague, allergy to oxygen, and elm blight), invidious California New York comparisons (California is the land of power failures, herbalist gurus, and routine skin cancer removals), masturbation endorsements ('the best part is afterward, the cuddling time'), and illusion-breaking asides ('Follow the story,' Val admonishes a restaurant patron who can't answer his plot questions ). Many of these one-liners and routines, along with other situational materials in 'Hollywood Ending,' resonate with deliberate (at least one hopes deliberate) recycling from great Allen films like 'Annie Hall,' 'Manhattan,' and 'Crimes and Misdemeanors.'

'Hollywood Ending's' second act consists of the preproduction and production of 'The City that Never Sleeps,' apparently intended as a dumbed-down remake of a gritty '40s urban drama. Val's first step is to hire a Chinese cameraman who knows no English and a business grad student translator who becomes his on-the-set conspirator after the psychosomatic blindness sets in. The translator eventually becomes a bit of a film critic a la the hit man in 'Bullets Over Broadway.' The location-scouting scenes with a gay art director who decides he simply must rebuild Times Square, Harlem, Central Park, and the Empire State Building are among the film's funniest, leading finally to the shooting sequences, Val's hysterical (in both senses) blindness, and a series of physical humor and cross purposes gags that owe as much to Abbott and Costello as to any of Allen's American comic film predecessors.

When, as the result of a weak plot device involving his strange/estranged son, Val recovers his sight and gets to see the footage he has created, his two word response is a side-splitter: 'Call Dr. Kevorkian!' Ironically, however, Val's blindness has transformed a commercial potboiler into an avant garde, Godardish anti-film that bombs in the U.S. but is a triumph in France. Like much of Allen's own work since 'Annie Hall,' Val Waxman's 'The City That Never Sleeps' is much too artsy-foreign for American audience tastes, but as he exclaims: 'Thank God the French exist. . . . Here I'm a bum, there I'm a genius.' In 'Hollywood Ending's' Hollywood ending, Val and the reconciled Ellie are off to Paris to live and film a love story - that is, if they haven't forgotten the Dramamine.

Although 'Hollywood Ending' does not compare favorably with Robert Altman's 'The Player' when it comes to Hollywood-bashing nor with Allen's more ambitious films of the last decade like 'Husbands and Wives' and 'Deconstructing Harry' in terms of artistic success, it has a sharply written, witty script and far more hits than misses among its (no)sight gags. On its most satisfying level, the film is a movable feast of in-joke bonbons for long-time Allen fans.

Not one of his better ones

[phd_travel · 5/10 · 26 March 2011]

For Woody Allen fans - this is one of the last ones with him acting so it is worth a watch. Unfortunately it's one of his weaker pictures. There are some laugh out loud moments esp his scene with Tea Leoni in the bar. The hypochondria isn't that funny. The main premise is interesting psychosomatic blindness but wears thin after a while. The supporting cast is not well utilized. Everyone is made to talk in that Woody Allen way. Tiffany Thiessen has such a small part. George Hamilton just a few lines. The Chinese cameraman and interpreter are quite funny at first. But overall it still is worth a watch for the pleasant neat storyline and the laughs in between. Just isn't that funny after all.

Some of it is witty Allen stuff but the blindness joke is stretched and the narrative poor

[bob the moo · 2 May 2005]

Following a string of flops and a "difficult" reputation, director Val Waxman is now paying the bills doing adverts or anything else he can get. When his ex-wife gets her project greenlit by producer boyfriend Hal Jaeger, she fights for Val to get the job. Despite the personal issues and conflicts Val knows it is his last chance to get his career back and takes the job. The personal problems are only the start of things going wrong whenever Val is suddenly struck down with psychosomatic blindness. Knowing that this would get him fired and ruined, Val and his agent try to conceal the fact and continue the film.

With poor reviews and no good signs about it, it was no surprise that this film never came to any cinemas near me (was it even released in the UK?) and to be honest I wasn't that bothered that I missed it. A visit to Austria recently found it playing in cinema in Vienna and, although I didn't see it then, it put it in my mind to watch it at home and see if it was worth the ongoing cinema screenings that the Austrians were giving it. The start of the film suggests a fairly good film as it is full of the usual Allen wit even if it felt a bit like him on autopilot. However with the "blindness" section things seem to falter and fail a bit – at first it is funny but quickly it gets tired and there is nothing injected into the film to shore it up. The reason for the blindness is suggested as interesting but it is barely done and not taken anywhere other than the most basic development in order to provide a conclusion. The idea is good and the real life parallels are interesting (Allen, handicapped by the American system but still appreciated in Europe even if he doesn't totally understand why) but these are not taken beyond the original concept and never brought out in the script. Instead we have plenty of OK jokes and quips but nothing that approaches an engaging narrative or a developed plot. It is still OK but it is unlikely that any audiences other than real Allen fans will get much fro it; as one I laughed and enjoyed it a bit but am not blind to the massive weaknesses.

Allen does his usual stuff to good effect and if you like him you'll like him here. Leoni acts in his shadow and can't make the role her own – she stays very much an Allen creation. Williams is enjoyable; Hamilton is fun and the support cast all do well enough with their various parts. None of them really shine but the script still shares the laughs around and nobody actually gave a bad performance as such – just a shame that none of them have a character to speak of either.

Overall this is an OK film but nothing more than that. Even fans of Woody Allen will be at a stretch to forgive a script that has no development, characters or reason. The laughs come in fits and starts and the film rarely satisfies; fun but nothing to write home about and I'm glad I didn't spent my limited time in Austria watching this.

An entertaining film that is neither one of Allen's best or worst

[TheLittleSongbird · 7/10 · 17 July 2014]

As said before, Woody Allen is a very acquired taste. To me he has made a lot of great films, a handful of masterpieces and while there have been some disappointments, while there are films of his yet to see, none of them have been terrible. Hollywood Ending has often been considered lesser Allen, and while it is not a masterpiece in any shape or form(like Annie Hall, Manhattan, Crimes and Misdeameanours, Hannah and Her Sisters, Husbands and Wives and Purple Rose of Cairo, Zelig is also very close to being one) and does fall short of great it is not among the bottom(so far What's Up Tiger Lily, To Rome with Love, Celebrity, Anything Else and Cassandra's Dream, although all of them had a fair share of redeeming qualities). Hollywood Ending is imperfect, the blindness joke has been much criticised and I have to agree, it is a joke so stretched out it becomes very tiring, the pacing as a result in the last act lost momentum and credibility went out the window. Much more could have been done with the subplot and relationship of Allen's character and his son, it was pretty much in the background and like a secondary subplot and it was a subplot that if more prominent could have given the film more heart and it would have made their relationship more interesting, in the end it felt under-baked. On the other hand, Hollywood Ending as always with Allen is very well-directed and looks fabulous with cinematography that is colourful and dreamlike. Hollywood Ending aside from the blindness joke is a very entertaining film, the one-liners are just delicious, Val has the best lines and they are just hilarious, and the gags are very characteristic of Allen and are well-engineered. As ever with Woody Allen, the film also has a lot to say about various subjects and explores them in an insightful and sometimes self-mocking way(that is sometimes and understandably considered self-indulgence). The story up till the last act has relationships and issues that we can identify with strongly, is well-paced and there is plenty of compelling story-telling. Hollywood Ending is expertly played with the best performance coming from Tea Leoni, who is immensely charming with very easy comic timing, closely followed by Woody Allen himself, who makes the most of his lines and delivers them in a way that makes them even funnier. Treat Williams is always a joy and Debra Messing looks as though she's enjoying herself. Admittedly some of the cast should have had more to work with, such as George Hamilton, but they are no less impressive. On the whole, Hollywood Ending has its flaws and Allen has done better work but it is an entertaining film in a lot of ways. 7/10 Bethany Cox

"bring me a cyanide flask!"

[pinocchietto · 7/10 · 23 January 2020]

Funny, it shows the character of Woody Allen. His spicological blindness obliges him to direct a film without seeing, the most beautiful phrase of the film is "bring me a cyanide flask!"

Woody Allen is hilarious. Top of his game.

[bvd-13918 · 7/10 · 9 May 2020]

Woody Allen is even MORE neurotic and hilarious in Hollywood Ending because his character is blind. He's smashing glasses, knocking over tables, and stumbling through this movie. It's ridiculous and fun.

2023. A Gen-X Review of a Decades Old Film That I've Never, Ever Seen Before

[RightOnDaddio · 7/10 · 15 September 2023]

Watching these early 21st Century Woody Allen films is as fun as it is silly.

These particular titles where he is the star in these early aughts productions, those are the efforts that require a greater strain on one's suspension of disbelief.

Sure, it's ridiculously enjoyable, the idea of a director losing his sight, literally, as his biggest project in years, in the twilight of his career, is about to lift off.

But the most astounding part of these 2000s films, is the young, gorgeous babes all throwing themselves at his every character.

Here, Debra Messing, who has never sizzled more so than she has here, is taken with his old washed up director character.

No way!

And Tea Leoni, her character is his ex wife.

No way.

And Allen must've had a real Saved By The Bell thing going because Tiffani Thiessen lunges at him in this movie, and Elizabeth Berkley in the film prior to this.

But even with all that, an unbelievably silly Woody Allen film from this century is still better than 99% of the garbage hitting cinemas these days.

A blind director making a big movie.

Will it be a smashing success? His finest work yet?

Or a total disaster?

You'll have to wait until the end to see for yourself.

Woody Allen's film is intelligent, charming and well acted

[PersianPlaya408 · 9/10 · 5 July 2003]

Hollywood Ending[First-Viewing, TV](Woody Allen)- Woody Allen, Tea Leoni, Mark Webber, George Hamilton, Treat Williams

Woody Allen directs, writes and stars in this semi-comedy, semi drama film about a Hollywood director (Allen) who is directing a film, and meanwhile suddenly goes blind. Meanwhile he has to work with his ex-wife(Leoni) who is now dating the owner (Williams) of the studio producing the film. The film has its typical Woody Allen jokes, and delivers in its comedy portions, very funny at times. The plot is also very interesting, especially how Woody goes blind. The film has some very good points that even make much more sense now with what Bush is doing in the world (Woody says `Thank god for the french'). Teo Leoni gives a good performance, and Woody is his charming self, Woody fans will him in this one. Mark Webber also gives an interesting performance as Woody's son. Overall a fresh screenplay from Woody, with decent direction and good performances. 9/10

Not the disaster it's been made out to be.

[MOscarbradley · 7/10 · 20 March 2021]

There's one really good gag in Woody Allen's "Hollywood Ending" and luckily it lasts for about three-quarters of the movie. In his most self-referential film since "Stardust Memories" Woody plays a film director who, in the course of making his comeback film, (for the producer who stole his ex-wife), goes psychosomatically blind and the gag is he must hide his blindness from everyone but the very few. What follows is what could best be described as 'one of the early funny ones', a farce with not too much analysis. Until he goes blind the movie isn't particularly funny and is more than a little self-indulgent; these are jokes we've heard a hundred times before. Consequently, "Hollywood Ending" isn't one of his better pictures and would probably make a better short story but there's a sweetness to it and Tea Leoni, (the ex-wife), and Debra Messing, (the dumb actress girlfriend), are both very likeable though when you get down to it, it's director Mark Rydell as Allen's perpetually optimistic Jewish agent who walks away with the movie.

Woody loses all five senses

[cherold · 3/10 · 10 November 2003]

Over the years, I've probably disliked almost as many Woody Allen movies as I've liked, but when I disliked one of his movies I still felt it was a generally well-made film that just went in a direction I didn't like. The shocking thing about Hollywood Ending is, it's badly made. Nothing is done with the film's reasonably clever potential and scenes that should have been funny simply fall apart. The dialogue is clunky and the film appears to be made by someone who has no concept of the basic mechanics of film comedy. There are some good lines scattered here and there but the movie is a truly toothless satire. There is no chemistry at all between Woody and Tea, who is wasted and reveals none of the comic talent she has shown elsewhere, and it seems painfully clear that Woody was not the right mate for her or anyone. Somehow Debra Messing manages to make more out of her little part than anyone else in the movie (except, perhaps, George Hamilton, who only gets about four lines but gets the most out of all four).

There are other Allen films I've actually found less enjoyable to watch than Hollywood Ending, but none I've found as badly made. I haven't seen the last couple of Allen films so I don't know if this marks the beginning of the end or if he was just having a bad year, but this is a truly bad movie.

Please Reward Woody Allen!

[Sylviastel · 8/10 · 6 June 2012]

Woody Allen is a comic genius who plays himself in this film as Val Waxman. I don't believe his on screen relationship with Debra Messing or with Tea Leoni but that's Woody Allen for you. This film has him playing a down and out New York City film director who gets to make a film in the city with a Chinese cinematographer who can't speak English. Just days before filming commences, his character comes down with blindness. He can't let the cast, crew, and backers know he's really blind. But still, I do enjoy a good Woody Allen comedy. It's light-hearted at times in this film. If you don't get Woody Allen, I'm sorry that you probably wouldn't like the film. Anyway, I think it's time he got his Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for television; the Cecil B. DeMille Award; the National Medal of the Arts; and the Kennedy Center Honors. It's just time for him to get his rewards.

Woefully under-rated

[JasparLamarCrabb · 6/10 · 3 February 2013]

A woefully under-rated Woody Allen comedy. Allen is a high minded film director who refuses to compromise despite having no commercial appeal to anyone. He's so difficult he's only able to get jobs directing COMMERICIALS! He's given the chance to direct a feature from ex-wife Téa Leoni and becomes so overwrought, he goes blind (unbeknownst to the studio or much of the crew). This is one of Allen's flat out funniest films with a great cast, a ridiculous plot and a classic Allen performance. Leoni is hilarious as well. Both are out-shone by Debra Messing as Allen's ditsy girlfriend and would-be actress. The supporting cast is a typical Allen free-for-all & includes Treat Williams, George Hamilton, and Tiffani Thiessen as a very aggressive ingénue.

I walked out...it was that bad

[joshualieder · 2/10 · 10 May 2002]

Woody Allen films are usually a treat. This one I watched in a darkened theater all by myself and I walked out. It was just not funny, not entertaining and a total waste of film. I kept wondering if those gathered to star in this boring movie hoped they might win an oscar or something. Woody is blind in the story at one point and I have read read reviews where they make light of this. Woody, retire gracefully now. You just dont make good movies anymore. I don't think you "see" this and you have tripped up horribly here. I honestly cant say one good thing about this film except that it was brightly lit, more so than any of your other films, most of which I've loved.