In playing off his real-life rep, Allen presents a film that’s more in line with his Husbands and Wives-type work. There’s coldness there and a harshness that doesn’t so much work in something like Everyone Says I Love You. But given the giddiness of the last four films (Everyone, Mighty Aphrodite, Bullets Over Broadway, and Manhattan Murder Mystery), Deconstructing Harry’s bitterness feels nearly soothing with its assault of four-letter words and its sometimes sexual explicitness. It’s Allen’s version of As Bad as I Wanna Be – it opens with a blow job and jumps to the wonderful Judy Davis shouting, “I ought to cut your fucking head off!” to which Allen asks, “Are you upset?” and on and on.

Woody Allen

The film follows an interesting elliptical line. Harry, who declares he’s no good at life, is apparently good enough at writing to be honored at a college in upstate New York. Not wanting to go alone, he looks for someone to go with, but he’s met with a barrage of ill will from former wives and lovers, many of whom are upset about their appearances as thinly disguised characters in his novels. It seems his past of cheating, whoring, boozing, and being all-around unlovable has finally caught up with him. When Harry looks upon his deeds, they come to him in bits and pieces and blurring fact and fiction, so that his wife, Joan, played by Kirstie Alley, may be represented in his fiction as Helen played by Demi Moore, or that Stanley Tucci and Richard Benjamin may appear as Harry’s book self.