Bullets Over Broadway (1994)
7/10
Woody Allen is not one of my favourite people, but even his movies have always been hit-or-miss. At their best they can be witty, intelligent, and inventive; at worst they are irritating, repetitive exercises in petty-bourgeois self-indulgence. Thankfully, Bullets Over Broadway skews closer to the former. Like most Allen’s movies, it featuring a nebbish Woody Allen-like lead character, but an amusing premise and fun supporting characters make this one of the director’s better efforts.
David Shayne (John Cusack) is a struggling playwright in 1920s New York City who is seeking financing for his play Gods of Our Fathers. Producer Julian Marx (Jack Warden) eventually finds a backer in mob boss Nick Valenti (Joe Viterelli), with one catch: David must cast Valenti’s talentless girlfriend Olive Neal (Jennifer Tilly) in a major role. Reluctantly accepting the offer, David finds Olive is shadowed at all times by Valenti’s henchman Cheech (Chazz Palminteri), whose growing creative input ends up drastically altering—and improving—the play. Meanwhile, David begins an affair behind his girlfriend’s back with the play’s leading lady, alcoholic washed-up star Helen Sinclair (Dianne Wiest).
There’s always a certain navel-gazing element to films, books, and plays in which the main character is a writer, particularly when the story involves the production of a film, book, or play. It threatens to take the maxim “Write what you know” a little too literally—an effect magnified in Woody Allen films, since the protagonist is always so clearly a stand-in for Allen. But Bullets Over Broadway works thanks to a solid cast, playing memorable characters with amusing interactions; and some self-aware humour in which Allen deflates his own screenwriting weaknesses.
David and Cheech’s relationship is a perfect example. Palminteri is very funny as the thuggish henchman whose dramatic instincts turn out to be better than that of the nebbish, intellectual playwright, which David realizes as he becomes more reliant on Cheech’s guidance. At one point Cheech rewrites the overly stylized dialogue in David’s play because, he says, real people don’t talk like that. That same flaw pervades much of Allen’s work, including Bullets Over Broadway. Sometimes it works and we get funny lines; other times we get dialogue that reeks of artifice and sounds more like a screenwriter’s creation than anything people would actually say to each other.
Cusack is effective as the lead, ably portraying the insecure Allen-like nebbish. He makes David feel like an actual character rather than a mere stand-in for the director. Tilly is consistently funny in her performances, and her turn as Olive is no different; for those who find her voice annoying, it actually serves the film in this context. Tilly and Wiest were both Oscar-nominated for Best Supporting Actress in their respective roles, with the latter winning. I don’t know if I would go as far as to say Wiest’s performance is “Oscar-worthy”, but her interactions with Cusack in which she repeatedly shushes him produce dependable laughs.
Other elements don’t work quite as well. Despite running only 98 minutes, the film feels longer than it is. When the dialogue works it’s funny; when it doesn’t it feels pretentious. It’s never really clear what Shayne’s play is actually about, which would have improved this story about people putting on a play. Rob Reiner’s character has some good lines, but I never bought him as the seducer he’s presented as. More could have been done with the character of Valenti, who doesn’t make much of an impression. Still, as Woody Allen films go it’s better than most.