Hollywood Ending

A renowned movie director badly in need of a comeback (writer/director Woody Allen) suffers from psychosomatic blindness when he gets a job on a picture produced by his ex-wife (Téa Leoni). It’s a one-joke movie, the joke being that everyone on the set is so self-absorbed they don’t notice that the director can’t see. Allen’s script doesn’t deliver everything it promises, with several interesting characters—especially Debra Messing as the director’s sweetly dim girlfriend—that are introduced and not developed. The movie’s saving grace are the many laugh-out-loud lines and the snap-crackle-pop rapport between Allen and Leoni; true, she’s too young for him (something all too common in movies in general, and in Allen’s own films in particular), but she’s the best leading lady he’s had in ages.