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Long ago, Woody Allen owned up: his one regret in life was that he was not someone else. Yet, for the better half of his artistic practice, Allen capitalized on that misanthropic, life-is-meaningless persona. In Whatever Works, his latest surrogate is none other than Larry David, here a carping string theorist who dots every other phrase with the thinking man's epithet: "microbe." He maintains his high-and-mighty m.o., even after dimwitted Southern waif Evan Rachel Wood moves in and, against all scientific reason, falls for the bastard — to entropic and farcical ends, of course. The filmmaker's return to a New York setting features some corned rehash (cf. '70s Woody), but there are plenty of hallmark one-liners, not to mention the charm of that irresistible Allen-David marquee.

– Jason Jude Chan