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Celebrity is Woody Allen's overblown and unfocused look at the deconstruction of a marriage and what the effects of the pursuit of celebrity and having celebrity thrust upon them do to the couple as they drift apart.
The 1998 film stars Kenneth Branaugh, far removed from the Shakespeare kings he was famous for prior to this, playing Lee Simon, a magazine writer who began and deserted writing a novel in favor of writing a screenplay. Lee was married to Robin (Judy Davis), a former schoolteacher and neurotic mess, who finds herself immediately attracted to a television executive (Joe Mantegna).
Lee's pursuit finds him agreeing to re-write his screenplay in order to get a famous actress (Melanie Griffith) who he is interviewing to do it and we are about two thirds of the way into the story before we meet the actor (Leonardo DiCaprio) Lee really wrote the screenplay for, an arrogant superstar with anger issues.
In the meantime, we watch the frightfully insecure Robin blossom through the career her new lover carves out for her, which actually leads to her becoming the anchorperson for a TV entertainment magazine and fighting everything that happens to her every step of the way.
Despite it being one of the Woodmeister's messier works, it definitely has its virtues, primarily the bravura performances of Branaugh and Davis in the leads. We've seen a lot of actors over the year appear in Woody's films as extensions of Woody and I can't recall an actor who channeled Woody better than Branaugh does here (John Cusack came close in Bullets Over Broadway). There are moments where you can close your eyes during Branaugh's scenes and you swear you're hearing Woody and with Branaugh playing this role, it is a lot easier to accept the various beautiful females who Lee becomes attracted to here. And there are very few actresses on the planet who play "hot mess" better than Judy Davis...Davis makes Robin, vulnerable, heartbreaking, funny, and endlessly fascinating. Love when she starts the fight with Lee in the movie theater during the screening, it's such a beautifully human event that still hits the funny bone. Or when Lee tries to break up with his girlfriend Bonnie (Famke Janssen) who starts screaming at him in front of moving men bringing her belongings into the apartment.
There are also memorable moments offered by Charlize Theron as an arrogant supermodel, Winona Ryder as a struggling actress, Bebe Neuwirth as a hooker, and Aida Turturro as a psychic, but it is the on-target performances of Branaugh and Davis that make up for a screenplay that doesn't seem to be exactly sure what it's trying to say. 7.5/10
The 1998 film stars Kenneth Branaugh, far removed from the Shakespeare kings he was famous for prior to this, playing Lee Simon, a magazine writer who began and deserted writing a novel in favor of writing a screenplay. Lee was married to Robin (Judy Davis), a former schoolteacher and neurotic mess, who finds herself immediately attracted to a television executive (Joe Mantegna).
Lee's pursuit finds him agreeing to re-write his screenplay in order to get a famous actress (Melanie Griffith) who he is interviewing to do it and we are about two thirds of the way into the story before we meet the actor (Leonardo DiCaprio) Lee really wrote the screenplay for, an arrogant superstar with anger issues.
In the meantime, we watch the frightfully insecure Robin blossom through the career her new lover carves out for her, which actually leads to her becoming the anchorperson for a TV entertainment magazine and fighting everything that happens to her every step of the way.
Despite it being one of the Woodmeister's messier works, it definitely has its virtues, primarily the bravura performances of Branaugh and Davis in the leads. We've seen a lot of actors over the year appear in Woody's films as extensions of Woody and I can't recall an actor who channeled Woody better than Branaugh does here (John Cusack came close in Bullets Over Broadway). There are moments where you can close your eyes during Branaugh's scenes and you swear you're hearing Woody and with Branaugh playing this role, it is a lot easier to accept the various beautiful females who Lee becomes attracted to here. And there are very few actresses on the planet who play "hot mess" better than Judy Davis...Davis makes Robin, vulnerable, heartbreaking, funny, and endlessly fascinating. Love when she starts the fight with Lee in the movie theater during the screening, it's such a beautifully human event that still hits the funny bone. Or when Lee tries to break up with his girlfriend Bonnie (Famke Janssen) who starts screaming at him in front of moving men bringing her belongings into the apartment.
There are also memorable moments offered by Charlize Theron as an arrogant supermodel, Winona Ryder as a struggling actress, Bebe Neuwirth as a hooker, and Aida Turturro as a psychic, but it is the on-target performances of Branaugh and Davis that make up for a screenplay that doesn't seem to be exactly sure what it's trying to say. 7.5/10