It’s a treat to watch Anthony Hopkins, Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin, Antonio Banderas and Freida Pinto together in a Woody Allen movie. And even if the end result isn’t as satisfying as most of his previous work, I still had a good time watching it. All the usual ingredients are here: we follow the story of an unhappy married couple, Sally (Watts) and Roy (Brolin). Sally develops a crush on her new boss, while Roy, a novelist awaiting the response on his latest book, falls in love with his new neighbor Dia (Pinto). Meanwhile, Sally’s mother abandons rationality and becomes dependant on the advice of a charlatan fortune teller, after her husband of 40 years (Hopkins) decides to leave her to pursue his lost youth and marry a much younger woman. And that’s basically it. Again, and like most of Woody Allen movies, there’s a mix of comedy and drama, enough to satisfy fans of his work. It’s not a movie that will grab every award out there, mainly because we’ve seen this so many times before, but it still succeeds in being strictly entertaining, and that’s all I was looking for. Of course I can’t rank it on the same level as “Crimes and Misdemeanors” or even “Match Point”, but I can’t dismiss it either; it’s a good addition to Allen’s filmography, and once you see it, I think you will feel the same way.

Rating: 2.5/4