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movie review - Curse of the Jade Scorpion

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

This is a Woody Allen flick, starring Woody Allen (naturally) opposite Helen Hunt. It's set in 1940, and features those two playing fueding figures at an insurance company. Allen's an older (imagine) fellow who's set in his ways and is challenged by Hunt's efficiency expert and her new ways. After the Allen's bumbling detective attends a hypnotist's show, he begins to carry out a series of jewel thefts at the hypnotist's command.

Rival detectives pick up the trail just as Allen stumbles on to the fact that Hunt is having an affair with the dastardly boss, played with surprising slimyness by Dan Akroyd. Now he's becoming sucked into his rival's affairs of the heart just at the same time she's realising that it's he that is committing the robberies.

This pic is more like Allen's early stuff, with a lighter tone than his recent outings, more sillyness, and certainly the older style of almost slapstick humour in certain places. Somehow, it's even easy to overlook the fact that Allen is something like 30 years older than Hunt.

I was pleasantly surprised by this one.

Recommended.