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Match Point (2005): 8/10

Poster (c) DreamWorks SKG

Throughout the last half-dozen years, Woody Allen has been producing minor, somewhat funny flops. Although people say he’s just been churning out one after another, it’s the way he’s always been, producing a gold mine in every few years. While his newest, Match Point, is hardly a gold mine, I’m sure you can get some pretty decent silver out of it. Yet it’s not the silver you’re expecting to get out of a reliable silver mine. You get silver that you’re not used to-a little sharper, a little rougher, yet it gets a little more on the market.

That’s the worst analogy I’ve ever seen, but you get the idea.

Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is a tennis instructor who is hired to teach Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode) tennis. Chris wins over his family and soon becomes a close friend who marries Tom’s sister Chloe (Emily Mortimer). However, Chris has eyes for Tom’s American fiancé Nola (Scarlett Johansson). Instead of a clumsy, bumbling New York Jew who falls for someone a third of his age, Chris is a charmer whose relationship with Nola intensifies past the point of no return, when Chris gets entangled in a web of lies, deceit, and tennis.

At the theater where I work, we’re currently showing Match Point. When I mention to inquiring customers that this is a Woody Allen movie, many times people become disenchanted. Yet when watching this movie, it’s impossible to believe that this is Allen at all. The writing is devoid of any jokes and the location’s about as far away from New York as possible (well, that’s untrue, but you get the idea). I had been used to Allen’s generic direction and funny, yet structurally lacking scripts, so Match Point was a slap in the face. The movie starts off somber and continues in that vein. The movie’s full of symbolism, red herrings, opera (was there any other music used?), and shots that had been previously used to show Allen’s love affair with New York.

Match Point is a movie comprised of mostly buildup. We see Chris slowly climb the social ladder and complicate his life, but we see no huge conflict. It appears that the movie seems to almost be for naught, until a bombshell is dropped, and then you know that the entire movie is satisfying. Allen drags out the movie, sometimes to the point of boredom, to get you to feel comfortable and sedated in the characters and their motives. I may be a horrible person, but when the dark climax of the movie was occurring, I had a smile on my face. Certainly the actions on screen were anything but funny, but I was thinking that Allen had played the audience, and he’s having fun with us.

Rhys Meyers, who was decent as the pretty-boy in Bend It Like Beckham, surprises by acting well as the nice guy who just took one toke over the line. You can read him, but he doesn’t play it obvious to the other characters in the movie. By being cool and calculating, you can understand all of his dilemmas. Johansson, one of the most talented female actors out there, shows why. She’s a very versatile actress, and plays her role with determination and slyness. So where are their Oscar nominations?

See Match Point and be extremely surprised. Put up with the movie dragging, because the payoff’s definitely worth it.

Rated R for some sexuality.

Review Date: February 4, 2006.