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There are two ways one can approach Woody Allen's Hollywood Ending. You can either dissect the film's anti-Hollywood tone while comparing its main character to Allen, or you can just sit back and enjoy a very funny, very imaginative story from America's favorite comedic writer (at least since his New York City tribute at the Oscars). If you can name another writer-director who continually drops extremely original material as often as Allen (he's been averaging just over one per year), I will buy you a ham. Sure, it's old-school comedy, and the self-deprecating shtick occasionally wears thin, but with Ending, Allen shows he can outgag any of those young whippersnappers making moving pictures today.
The once-great Allen (winner of three Oscars) plays Val Waxman, a once-great film director (and winner of two Oscars) who has fallen on hard times and, as Ending opens, is making ends meet by directing a deodorant commercial in Canada. His young girlfriend, the gum-cracking, off-off-Broadway actress Lori (Debra Messing, Will & Grace), takes Val to task when he's fired from the commercial gig because the notoriously difficult director didn't like the lighting. But Val's career receives a major jolt when he is offered a chance to helm a $60 million period piece called The City That Never Sleeps.
But there's a catch. Sleeps is the pet project of Val's ex-wife Ellie (Téa Leoni, Jurassic Park 3) and it's being financed by a studio run by the guy (Treat Williams) who stole her away from him. This, coupled with the stress of knowing his career will be over if Sleeps isn't a big hit, causes the hypochondriac director to develop hysterical blindness. He's afraid to tell anyone other than his agent Al (Mark Rydell), who prods Val to continue on as if nothing were wrong. When Val wonders how he could possibly do his job without being able to see, Al reassures him that it doesn't matter by asking, "Have you seen some of the pictures out there?"
There are more kinks in the filmmaking process besides the blindness, such as Val's pre-sight-loss decision to use a Chinese cinematographer who can't speak any English (like Allen using Zhao Fei for his last two projects), and the inevitable casting of the horrible Lori. It all makes the problems on Project Greenlight seem like minor trouble. Mostly, though, Ending is a lot of blind jokes and a veritable never-ending string of serious, deep-cutting jabs at Hollywood and Hollywood types, as well as a huge dig at the French that almost seems tacked on as an afterthought now that we all know Ending is the opening night film at Cannes this year.
Ending isn't quite as tight as we've come to expect from Allen (it's his longest film ever). Most of the excess is in the setup, with Val's psychosomatic condition surfacing too late (45 minutes) into the film. The physical comedy related to the blindness overstays its welcome a bit, mostly because that kind of humor isn't Allen's forte. That said, Ending is a marked improvement over the slightly plodding The Curse of the Jade Scorpion.
Strangely, considering Allen's remarkable talent for getting great performances from his actresses (he snagged Mira Sorvino an Oscar!), Leoni is the only female member of the cast that emerges from Ending without making themselves look too bad. Messing is a mess, and Thiessen seems to be cast more for her ability to fill a bra than her acting chops. The male roles, notably Rydell's Al, Mark Webber (Storytelling) and Peter Gerety (Homicide), seem to fare much better.
1:54 - PG-13 for some drug references and sexual material
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