A classic Woody Allen story.
If, like me, your all time favor Woody Allen film is Anne Hall, then your in luck. Crsis in Six Scenes is basically an 80 year old Alvin Singer shuffling around, bitiching and moaning about everything, and baffled as to why no one cares what he has to say.
Of course, if your coming to Crisis in Six Scenes with the expectation this is going to be groundbreaking new work from the man who hasn’t changed his looks, jokes, or formulas since the late 1950s, well, what the hell are you thinking?
This is Woody Allen at his best. This is the Woody Allen that I love. I absolutely hated Blue Jasmine and Irrational Man, though I have to admit that I loved Midnight in Paris. But those were Woody Allen movies without Woody Allen in them. I can’t even remember the last thing I saw a movie that had Woody himself in the cast.
In Crisis in Six Parts we find Sidney J. Munsinger, played by Woody, living in a mansion with his marriage thearapest wife Kay, played by Elaine May. The story is set in the 1960s and the main plotline involved Sidney and May hosting a Patty Hearst type charatcer named Lennie Dale played by Miley Cyrus. In short order she corrupts everyone but Sidney with her radical hippy ways. Before long everyone is quoting Chairman Mao and preparing to move to Cuba in protest over the war in Vietnam.
There are only six episodes, as might be expect from the title, and each one runs a bit under thirty mintues. There are a lot of plotlines crammed into this tiny space. There are also a lot of great cameos:Joy Behar, Lewis Black, Becky Ann Baker, and a couple of dozen other older actors with familar faces and unfamilar names.
I liked the look and the feel of Crisis in Six Scenes. There was a lot of talking, as one might expect from Woody Allen, and most of it was kind of funny and some of it was very funny.
