Word: allenã
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What results is a mockery of American insensitivity, sweetly embodied by Sondra’s spunky candor and naiveté. Naturally, though, Allen??s exploration of this transatlantic cultural divide includes a few jabs at presumed British prestige. Leaving a party after a card trick, for example, Sid remarks, “I was just about to pull quarters out of the Lady’s nose...
Prominent among these potshots is the casting of Australian Hugh Jackman (“X-Men”) as Peter Lyman, the son of a British Lord who Sondra meets—and subsequently falls for—while investigating a string of murders. Most of Allen??s skittishness seems to be rooted in the loss of the mutual understanding he had with New Yorkers, and the need to find something similar in London. A few delightful moments of Woody Allen 101 ensue, as when he explains to a British Lady, “I was born into...
Thankfully, as with “Annie Hall” and some of Allen??s other films, it is the director’s nervous tics that drive “Scoop” to hilarity. The other actors’ performances aren’t quite on-par with those of earlier Woody pieces—Jackman’s Australian accent occasionally surfaces, and Johansson’s Sondra is uneven—but they never cause the film to lose comic traction...
...with his other leading roles, Allen??s Sid isn’t so much a character as an extension of Allen himself, a manifestation of the anxiety that ripples through the film’s director. For once, that anxiety might be justified: the end of the film suggests that, while Sondra’s brusque American charm could breathe some welcome life into the London elite, cynical New Yorkers of Allen??s generation might not have a place in European high society...
...best things about “Scoop” is that Allen??s predicament remains his own. Close up, the fear and disappointment of it all might even prove disconcerting, but it’s great fun to watch from the comfortable distance of the other side of the Atlantic...