Review

In Hollywood Ending, a famed director and auteur who hasn't had an artistic success in ten years attempts a comeback with a studio production set on the streets of New York. As comically envisioned by Allen, who shares a few similarities with his fictional alter ego, Hollywood Ending sets out to poke fun at the moviemaking process and some of the business' players, but despite some good laughs can't quite deliver on an amusing premise. Allen plays Val Waxman, an Oscar-winning director who has been reduced to TV commercials in Canada. He gets a break when his ex-wife (Leoni), now a studio exec in L.A., gets him hired for a big-budget gangster drama. Woody is in lovable neurotic mode, so it isn't long until Val experiences a comic breakdown -- in the form of going blind. Hollywood Ending suffers a bit from some inconsistent pacing and the comic timing seems off, but Allen has made sure there's enough good humor to go around. Leoni is quite good as Waxman's ex, but you never believe the two were once married, which detracts from the film. Great romantic comedies succeed, in part, by the audience rooting for the two leads to get together by the end of the film -- here you just don't care.