A Rainy Day in New York (2019) MPI Media Group/Comedy RT: 92 minutes Rated PG-13 (mature suggestive content, some drug use, language, partial nudity) Director: Woody Allen Screenplay: Woody Allen Cinematography: Vittorio Storaro Release date: NDA (No Date Announced) Cast: Timothee Chalamet, Elle Fanning, Selena Gomez, Jude Law, Diego Luna, Liev Schreiber, Kelly Rohrbach, Annaleigh Ashford, Rebecca Hall, Cherry Jones, Will Rogers, Suki Waterhouse, Ben Warheit, Griffin Newman, Kathryn Leigh Scott. Box Office: $23.8M (World)
Rating: **
As of this writing, I can’t say when or even if American audiences will get to see A Rainy Day in New York, the latest film written and directed by Woody Allen. It was originally slated for release last year, but Amazon Studios cancelled it due to his being named in the #MeToo movement. We all know why he’s in the proverbial doghouse so there’s no need to rehash it.
Over the past few months, A Rainy Day in New York has opened in other parts of the world- e.g. Poland, Greece, Turkey, Mexico, Argentina, South Korea, etc- but no American distributor will touch it. I got a chance to view it this past week and rest assured, you’re not missing a thing. While not as bad as his previous film, the execrable Wonder Wheel, it’s a far cry from the glory days of Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanors. If nothing else, it’s proof positive that Woody Allen is no longer relevant.
This time, Woody’s stand-in is played by Timothee Chalamet, the young star of Lady Bird, Call Me by Your Name and Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Little Women remake. The son of wealthy parents in New York City (where else?), Gatsby Welles attends upstate Yardley College where he coasts through his classes and makes extra money playing high-stakes poker. He sticks with school only because of his girlfriend Ashleigh (Fanning, Maleficent), a naïve aspiring journalist from Arizona. When she gets the chance to interview famous filmmaker Roland Pollard (Schreiber, Spotlight) in Manhattan, Gatsby decides to go with her so they can have a romantic weekend together in the city. Naturally, things don’t go exactly as planned.
Once Gatsby and Ashleigh go their separate ways, nothing goes right. Ashleigh’s interview with Pollard turns into a madcap adventure of sorts after he agitatedly leaves a private screening. She joins his assistant Ted (Law, Captain Marvel) in searching the city, hoping to find him before he does something crazy like recut his movie. Meanwhile, Gatsby runs into Shannon (Gomez, The Dead Don’t Die), the annoying younger sister of a former girlfriend, on the set of a student film being directed by an old classmate. She’s initially harsh which can only mean she’ll soften up when they inevitably meet again later. And since it’s New York, it’ll probably involve sharing a taxi.
A Rainy Day in New York will be familiar terrain for what’s left of Woody’s fans. He rehashes many of the same motifs like obscure name-dropping- e.g. Ortega y Gasset, Renoir- and peppering the dialogue with $10 collegiate words- e.g. apoplectic, plutocrat. Nobody in real life talks like the characters in a Woody Allen film. The score, as usual, is comprised of old jazz standards. The cinematography by third-time collaborator Vittorio Storaro depicts NYC as the most romantic of American cities, one curiously devoid of hostile city dwellers and street people. The main character is experiencing crises of the romantic and existential kind. In Woody’s universe, the two are never mutually exclusive. It even has a slightly ditzy Mia Farrow stand-in in Fanning who doesn’t quite pull it off. She doesn’t NOT pull it off either. It’s an odd performance if I’m being honest.
The biggest problem is that A Rainy Day in New York simply isn’t funny. I get that Woody is going for a 30s-style screwball comedy with all the nutty situations Ashleigh finds herself in. At one point, the paparazzi films her with a handsome movie star (Luna, Rogue One), mistakenly assuming she’s his new girlfriend. Of course, it ends up on the 6 o’clock news and naturally, Gatsby is watching. This bit falls flat as does all the other attempts at humor. When the focus shifts to Gatsby, A Rainy Day in New York becomes a variation of The Catcher in the Rye with the young man walking the streets and sitting hunched over tables and pianos at hotel bars. This doesn’t really work either even though Chalamet delivers a decent performance. The uneasy mix of the zany and the existential results in a markedly uneven movie.
Woody always manages to put together interesting casts for his movies. Unfortunately, he always has at least one or two annoying characters. In A Rainy Day in New York, the dishonor goes to Gomez for her brittle socialite, one who knows everything about his relationship with her sister. There’s nothing wrong with her performance or, for that matter, anybody else’s. There’s nothing remarkable here either. It’s like everybody is on Woody Allen auto play.
In defense of the cast, many of them donated their entire salaries to organizations like RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), Time’s Up and the LGBT Center due to the allegations against their director. Given the backlash against celebrities accused of sexual misconduct, I wouldn’t be surprised if Woody decided to retire after finishing work on his next film Rifkin’s Festival (due next year). I think it’s a good idea. He used to make films people wanted to see; now he makes films nobody sees. He obviously doesn’t have any more good ideas; he just recycles old ones. Does that make A Rainy Day in New York a green movie?
