Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
A New York girl sets her father up with a beautiful woman in a shaky marriage while her half sister gets engaged.
Woody Allen's late-career musical is a genuine oddity — a lavish, affectionate homage to classic Hollywood musicals performed almost entirely by non-singers, which gives it an irresistibly charming, off-kilter quality that no other filmmaker would attempt in quite this way. The novelty of casting name actors (Goldie Hawn, Alan Alda, Julia Roberts, Edward Norton) singing imperfectly through Cole Porter and show tunes is genuinely distinctive and earns a high Novelty score. The cinematography, shot in New York and Paris, has Allen's typically warm, golden-toned visual aesthetic — handsome but not exceptional. The ensemble acting is appealing if uneven, with Norton a clear standout. The plot is thin even by Allen's standards — a meandering, loosely connected set of romantic vignettes that never quite cohere into a satisfying whole — and the ending drifts rather than resolves, leaving a pleasant but inconclusive impression.