Director: Woody Allen
Year Released: 2013
Rating: 2.0
Prissy social-climber Jasmine (Cate Blanchett), following a horrible separation from a philandering husband (Alec Baldwin), goes and lives with her step-sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) in San Francisco to piece her life back together (she's rather taken with washing Xanax down with vodka) - while there, she takes classes in computing, works at a dentist's office and starts dating well-to-do Dwight (Peter Sarsgaard), who wants to go into politics. There seems to be (historically speaking) a sizeable gap in quality between Woody's more dramatic films and his (relatively better) comedic efforts, with this one being in the former category - in this particular effort his (not-so-latent) misogyny appears to be out in full-force: he seems to regard both twitchy, neurotic Jasmine and blue collar Ginger with equal amounts of disdain. Jasmine, difficult and stuck-up, repeatedly gets her comeuppance to the point where she's sitting on a bench and mumbling to herself (another nervous breakdown?) while Ginger, stuck with lowly Chili (Bobby Cannavale), finds an opportunity to 'date up' in the form of engineer Al (Louis C.K.), discovers Al has a wife and then quickly runs back to Chili (who, stupidly enough, accepts her return). These ugly underpinnings - and Allen's contempt for his female leads - is disappointing, but on the bright side the performances by Cannavale and Ginger's ex-husband Augie (Andrew Dice Clay) are worth noting, particularly for Clay, who stands out in his few moments on screen (welcome back, Diceman, I always knew you had it in you).
