As usual, Woody Allen pokes fun at many of the popular themes and anxieties in today’s popular culture. Take the ghost of distinguished journalist Joe Strombel (Ian McShane), a plucky would-be journalist Sondra Pransky (Scarlett Johansson), a debonair English aristocrat playboy (who is possibly a serial killer) Lord Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman), and a washed up vaudeville magician Sid Waterman (Woody Allen) and you have a cross-genre parody of everything from our obsession with detective and supernatural dramas (Ghost Whisperer, Medium, Sixth Sense) to the predictable slapstick seductions of the romantic comedy.

While participating in Sid Waterman’s magic act, Sondra Pransky is visited by the ghost of Joe Strombel who has a hot lead that Lord Peter Lyman may be the Tarot Card Killer. As Sondra, Scarlett Johansson downplays her Brigitte Bardot-like sex kitten image into a bespectacled enthusiastic klutz, almost in homage to Woody Allen’s characters in his 1960s and 1970s films. Sondra manages to be the perfect foil to Sid (Woody Allen)’s ad-libbed jokes, and she is ever the classic Allen-scripted argumentative woman. Their repartee dominates the film, echoing Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, whose plots were just a backdrop for a series of routines and gags. However, many jokes lie embedded in the narrative structure; dashing Peter (Hugh Jackman) is the obvious love interest but Sondra spends far more time with Sid than Peter; thus her deeper and closer relationship is with the older, unattractive Sid. Allen may have stepped back from casting himself as the romantic interest but he still casts himself at the centre of the film, although it may seem his character is at the periphery.

Allen is marvellous as Sid Waterman ‘Splendini’ a cheesy stage magician with all the oldest tricks in the book and the most absurd and ridiculous banter. This is Allen at his best, laughing at himself, laughing at show biz, laughing at sincerity, and laughing at his power. The dry, deadpan delivery, and self-depreciation that he is famous for, make his tired, badly-dressed ham of a character appear more thrilling than the dull classic beauty of the romantic leads Sondra and Peter.

Romance itself, and the conventions of the very popular romantic comedy movie genre, take a hammering with atypical romantic settings garishly exposed as absurd and tinged with danger. The scripting is superb and Allen manages to maintain interest and mystery all the way, twisting and turning plot possibilities all over the place. Tortured into oblivion is the classic motif of the only obstacles to true love being mistaken identity, and misunderstanding, as a suspected serial-killer seduces Sondra.

There is lightness to the story in its evenly-paced style and pastel colour palette, along with softly lit outdoor scenes, yet the humour is altogether quite dark. The whole story is tied together with death; the journalist refusing to let go of worldly concerns and fighting to communicate and participate in the world of the living; the murdered women; and the life-threatening situations Sondra and Sid fall into as they investigate. The plot hints at film noir but the way it is played and shot screams family entertainment. These paradoxes are what make Allen, and comedy itself, critical of form as well as subject. Scoop manages to appear on the surface as a light-hearted romantic comedy, yet the story has all the elements of horror and suspense in films like The Silence of the Lambs. Allen has taken a range of stock dark elements like ghosts and murderers and placed them in a pleasant English garden, highlighting frightening things but without the scary music and moody clichéd lighting. This is perhaps the most sparklingly happy film of Allen’s that I have seen, mainly because it reduces hauntings and homicide to the banal rather than the menacing unknown, and somehow that just made me feel better.


Scoop
2006

Director: Woody Allen
Screenwriters: Woody Allen
Cinematographer: Remi Adefarasin
Editor: Alisa Lepselter
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson, Ian McShane, Woody Allen