Scoop

An American journalism student in London (Scarlett Johansson) gets a tip from the ghost of an ace reporter (Ian McShane) about the identity of a notorious serial killer; soon she and a sad-sack magician (writer-director Woody Allen) are investigating an upper-class playboy (Hugh Jackman), while the student is falling in love with him. Allen is back in his let’s-just-be-funny mode: less substantial than his best movies (Annie Hall, Radio Days, Hannah and Her Sisters, etc.) but more hospitable than the sour misanthropy of Crimes and Misdemeanors, Husbands and Wives or Match Point. Johansson is at her most effervescent and endearing, Allen at his most jittery and neurotic, and Jackman at his most suave and dashing, and the mystery is satisfying without being particularly complex or surprising.