CELEBRITY

Beginning and ending with the word “HELP” sky-written in the air, Woody Allen’s new dark comedy, CELEBRITY, clearly demonstrates the need for salvation and healing needed among the participants of the narcissistic world of show business.

Kenneth Branagh plays Lee Simon, a travel/entertainment reporter, replacing Woody Allen himself as a dirty-minded, neurotic, troubled man who constantly digs a hole for himself in relationships and work. Encountering every type of person in the show business world (played by celebrities themselves), Lee discovers the incredible shallowness and vanity of those seeking fame, while his estranged wife Robin finds a few points of light in this same world.

Filmed in black and white, the story begins with Lee covering a film shoot in Manhattan. There, he meets a young actress, Nola (Winona Ryder), with whom he is instantly smitten. They flirt but nothing comes of it. Then, Lee follows the star of the filmed movie, Nicole Olivier (Melanie Griffith), to her childhood home in order to write a story, but there it is implied that she performs oral sex on him. This experience incites Lee to confront his wife Robin and demand a divorce. He wants to be free to fornicate at will. They divorce, and the movie flip-flops back and forth between their new unattached lives.

Lee covers an art exhibit where the artist talks about his next work, an 8-foot phallus. Lee also interviews a priest who has a television show and tries to seduce a young model (Charlize Theron) who claims to be sexually sensitive all over her body. Lee goes to pitch his script to teenage idol sensation, Brandon Darrow (Leonardo DiCaprio), but all Brandon wants to do is snort coke, beat up on his girlfriend, or have group sex. (DiCaprio spoofs his teenage idol status by acting as a foul-mouthed spoiled brat in this brief scene.) Eventually, Lee finds a dark-haired beauty named Bonnie (Famke Janssen), and she moves into his apartment with him.

Meanwhile, Robin goes to get a consultation at a plastic surgeon. There, she meets a video producer, Tony Gardella (Joe Mantegna), who is doing a feature story on plastic surgery. Tony asks Robin out and dotes on her. Robin can’t believe how nice Tony is, and so she runs away on the day of their marriage. She goes to a psychic. The psychic tells her she needs to return to her husband. Robin does, and they do get re-married, but Robin still feels insecure and goes to visit a prostitute to learn sex tips. Later, her life again intersects with Lee’s at a press screening for the movie that was being shot at the start of the story.

The good news is that Woody Allen has at least temporarily not cast himself as the old man who gets the young girls. That act was becoming very distasteful. Fans of Woody will have to do with Kenneth Branagh, who is eerily similar to Woody in manner and speech. Woody fans may also enjoy the clever, though sexually and morally problematic, dialogue he infuses into his pictures, making them characteristically unique. Regrettably, there is little praiseworthy about CELEBRITY. If ever there was a cautionary tale about entering into the world of show business, this is it. It doesn’t say you will get sucked into vanity and narcissism, but it does suggest that you will meet a lot of very needy and immoral people.

At every turn, Lee meets a sexually charged young female (almost certain to be a Woody Allen fantasy), or someone who makes a glib sexual reference. Lee certainly tries to find a good life for himself, but he continually lets people down, hurting others and never able to communicate in an open and helpful manner with his would-be girlfriends and those with whom he works. Robin has it better. She finds a man who is good to her, forgives her and who has a supportive family. Yet, even so, she doesn’t have the security to enjoy a good relationship. She seeks advice from prostitutes.

Woody Allen has been making movies long enough to see the underbelly of Hollywood (even though he lives and works in New York). CELEBRITY may be a journalistic event itself, a straight-up examination of what it means to be desirous of others’ attention. Yet, done with fictional characters in a tongue-in-cheek style, Allen invites the audience to laugh at those who are and would be stars.

The major, and fatal, blow to this equation is that Allen has lost his humor. All that remains is the sad, pitiful lives of those who may have some religion around them (namely Catholicism and Judaism) but none of its power, and certainly no standard of a loving relationship. Allen continually shows his wounds, a cry for healing, yet finding none. It is bitter, and not very sweet. Allen may be able to receive accolades for originality, but CELEBRITY only shows the expensive price of limelight, without the Living Light.