Woody Allen's 'Whatever Works' smart but breezy

Woody Allen's main character in "Whatever Works" rants directly into the camera, breaking the "Fourth Wall" of theater, but not much new ground.

Still, the smart, breezy and intermittently engaging "Whatever Works" celebrates the return of two key staples in Allen's cinematic canon: New York City (which has taken a back seat to Europe for his past few films), and Allen himself, or at least his alter-ego.

That character is supplied by comedian and writer Larry David, whose uncanny ability to capture Allen's physical and vocal essence on screen borders on the supernatural.

David plays the fatalistic curmudgeon Boris Yellnikoff, a cantankerous germaphobe and former string-theory scientist whose lowly view of humanity and his marriage to a wealthy wife compelled him to jump out a New York high rise in a failed suicide attempt.

Now walking with a limp, Boris hangs out at a cafe with his middle-aged cronies, expounding on quantum physics, the randomness of a cold and godless world, the stupidity of the human race and the pointlessness of life.

In one of the film's conceits, Boris not-so-secretly directs many of his entertaining rants and blunt tirades to us, the moviegoers, while his pals scratch their heads, wondering, "Who are you talking to?"

Weirdly enough, this old plot eerily recalls the filmmaker's infatuation with his own real-life stepdaughter-turned-wife the moment that Melodie St. Ann Celestine, played by Evan Rachel Wood, meets him on the street and begs for food and a place to stay.

Still wearing her high school letter jacket, Melodie, a young, blonde pageant queen from Mississippi, explains she left her conservative family.

Boris can't stand her. For one thing, she's as smart as Post Toasties.

Yet, he lets her stay. And stay. And stay.

Then he marries her.

Had Allen knocked just a few years off Melodie's age, "Whatever Works" might have turned into his own "Lolita," all about an aging man's fantasy of marrying a too-young female who dotes on his every word and adopts his pessimistic views of the universe unchallenged.

Allen takes his story in a different direction. Although this reassuring rush for the bellowing Boris lasts a long time, it's not forever.

Suddenly, the small cast of "Whatever Works" exponentially multiplies as Melodie's Bible-toting mother Marietta (Patricia Clarkson) arrives at Boris' door (to the intro of Beethoven's Fifth) and freaks out upon seeing her daughter's new, very old husband.

They are shortly joined by Marietta's cheating, gun-nut spouse (Ed Begley Jr.) and a handsome New Yorker (Henry Cavill) who shows Melodie the possibility of sex that doesn't require a special pill.

With Boris excepted, the characters in "Whatever Works" undergo miraculous, surprising transformations as Allen guides them gently into the moral of his story, that it's up to everyone to seize whatever joy and happiness he/she can to survive in a bitter and indifferent universe.

By the end of "Whatever Works," even David's spot on rendition of Woody Allen's dark side unleashed starts to be likable.

"Whatever works"

Rating: 3 stars

Starring: Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood, Patricia Clarkson, Michael McKean

Directed by: Woody Allen

Other: At the River East 21 and Century Centre in Chicago, Renaissance Place in Highland Park, the Evanston CineArts 6. A Sony Classics release. Rated PG-13 for language, nudity. 92 minutes.