Hollywood Ending - PG-13\nStarring: Woddy Allen, Téa Leoni, Debra Messing\nDirected by: Woody Allen\nShowing: Showplace East 11\nWoody Allen's latest forego at comedy seems to be nothing short of a celluloid plea for pity. "Hollywood Ending" tells the story of a neurotic director whose time to shine in Hollywood has long since been reduced to a flicker. \nDiminished to directing geriatric commercials, he's offered one last chance to direct "The City that Never Sleeps," a commercial period piece about Manhattan. He gets the job because, as one character puts it. "…Manhattan is in his marrow." Hmmm. A washed-up, eccentric director who used to have a real taste for the Big Apple…Yeah, that's probably not a coincidence.\nWhat ensues is a series of insider jokes on Canada, the moviemaking industry, and the redemptive powers of France. Val Waxman, Allen's annoyingly loquacious character, has been out of the cinematic loop for some while. But when his ex-wife (Téa Leoni) pleas with her new producer husband, Hal (Treat Williams), to allow Val one more chance, he reluctantly agrees. Val, however, is a pill-popping hypochondriac who manages to come down with psychosomatic blindness on the first day of filming. Nearly the rest of the movie is about watching Val trying to direct while secretly being blind.\n"Hollywood Ending" comes out like the movie-within-the-movie. It looks like it was directed by a blind man. The only difference between "Ending" and "City" is that the French take Waxman, in all of his apparent nonsensical genius, to be the next Truffault. No such luck with this. Allen's film meanders and rambles about with seemingly little sense of going anywhere. Loose ends are left scattered like confetti to the wind. \nAudience members generally chuckled on occasion and there were moments that left me with the traces of a smirk. Téa Leoni actually provides the only time-worthy aspect of this film with her fine performance (sans boxing gloves!) as Val's ex-wife. But running at nearly two hours, I was left wondering when the film was going to call it a wrap. Sadly enough, much like Waxman, Allen and his film feel old and out of touch with things, their only hope residing with the French, God help them. And not even the French could be blind to the flaws in this pitiful "Ending."\n
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