Woody Allen Movies

In his review over at NRO, Thomas Hibbes is, if not enthusiastic, at least willing to give a thumbs up to Woody Allen's latest film, Midnight in Paris.  Among Hibbes' several reasons is that it's an improvement over most of Allen's more recent movies in which he "indulged in strident liberal politics and incoherent nihilistic musings."

Go and see the new flick if you like (I probably won't), but Hibbes' review did remind me of something I thought about a few months back when I saw again on television Allen's most successful film (if your measure is Oscars won, that is) Annie Hall. 

It's been some time since I tried to appreciate, or even watch, a new Woody Allen movie.  I stopped caring even before he was revealed to be a creep and a pervert.  Maybe it was because, as Hibbes suggests, the films became more insufferably left-wing.  Maybe it was simply because they became less funny.  But I repeat myself.

Anyway, it occurred to me that night as I watched Annie Hall that one of the chief reasons Allen's old movies were enjoyable to me, a conservative, was that his most caustic wit was directed mostly at the various neuroses and hypocrisies that described his closest friends, fellow liberals.  Try watching something of his from the 1970s and see if you don't agree.

To Allen, conservatives are probably scary people, then as now.  But liberals are definitely funnier.  Maybe if he went back to skewering them instead his career would enjoy a much needed renaissance.  
.