Word: sid
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...collection of jokes; they were skits, theater pieces that got laughs from the asides as much as the punch lines. And each bit was populated with two, three, many characters. It was like a classic sketch on Your Show of Shows, except that Lenny played all the parts: Sid Caesar's, Carl Reiner's, Howie Morris' and Imogene Coca's. He wasn't a great mimic ? all the voices had his nasal Long Island timbre ? but he was a confident actor. And since each routine tended to evolve as he performed it, Lenny was less a sick comic than...
...white bread of the English upper crust. Through a device too silly to be mentioned here, he comes to the attention of Sondra Pransky (Johansson), an American college student abroad. She believes Peter may be the infamous Tarot Card Killer who has been murdering prostitutes. Her co-sleuth is Sid Waterman (Allen), a not-so-hot magician who masquerades as her oil-rich father...
...golden girl du jour is Scarlett Johansson, back after her performance in the brilliant “Match Point.” Johansson plays Sondra Pransky, a gawky American journalism student as out of place in London as Allen’s on-screen alter ego, the cynical magician Sid Waterman. Not unlike Allen himself, Sid is searching for easy-to-please deep-pocketed clientele (which he finds in the stilted British upper class), and befriends Sondra along...
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...
...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...