Wild Man Blues . Tucson Weekly . 06-15-98

Wild Man Blues

DIRECTED BY: Barbara Kopple

REVIEWED: 06-15-98

It's little surprise that Woody Allen, who uses his films to confess every sordid aspect of his personality (see Deconstructing Harry if you haven't figured this out yet), would be happy to let a famous documentary filmmaker (Barbara Kopple) into his private world--provided he had the right to OK the final cut, of course. And it's little surprise that Kopple's footage of Allen and his companion Soon-Yi Previn reveals a functional, if sorely isolated by fame and notoriety, relationship. So why bother to see this document of Woody's progress as his old-style New Orleans jazz band tours Europe? Good question. Despite occasional nuggets of amusement--like Woody's trademark kvetching or Soon-Yi's blithe admission that she hasn't seen Annie Hall, thought Interiors was "tedious," and best loves Manhattan (the one in which Woody dates a teenage Mariel Hemingway)--there's little to recommend this glorified home movie. Call it a portrait of an artist if you wish, but at this point Woody's well past his artistic prime, and his clarinet dilettantism, while sweetly impressive, hardly merits a full-length motion picture.

--Woodruff

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Wild Man Blues

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