Anything Else
DreamWorks Distribution | Release Date: September 19, 2003 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
43
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 37 Critic Reviews
Positive:
9
Mixed:
16
Negative:
12
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
70
VarietyDavid Stratton
The younger casting brings a freshness to the material and, with Allen as the weird mentor, there are plenty of laughs, even if the pacing's slow and the running time over-extended. Read full review
50
Dallas ObserverJean Oppenheimer
Disappointingly mediocre. Read full review
42
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
With every recycled piece of business -- which is to say, every scene in Anything Else -- the distance widens between Allen and the elusive audience he pessimistically chases. He has never seemed less in touch with his own real, pulsing, 21st-century city. Read full review
40
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
Meant as a return to the form and substance of Allen's far superior early work satirizing the equivocations and betrayals with which we ruin our lives. In fact, the movie only comes alive as a hostile critique of psychoanalysis. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
Has some of the wit, sass and sexual candor of an "Annie Hall." But it covers the same kind of territory with more bite and bile. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesManohla Dargis
Feels newly hatched. Some of the laugh lines creak as loudly as grandma's rocker and the cultural references send up billows of dust. Read full review
70
The New York TimesDana Stevens
Small-scale and loose. It feels oddly long for a Woody Allen picture, but its relaxed, casual air gives the humor room to breathe, and a gratifyingly high proportion of the piled-up one-liners actually raise a laugh. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
This is a quintessential Allen comedy: squirmy relationships, dark Jewish humor, an assumption that everybody in Manhattan has money and a touch of glamour, and -- as with most of Allen's movies since the first few years of his career -- not nearly as many laughs as it gamely tries for. Read full review
30
SalonStephanie Zacharek
Anything Else isn't just the latest Woody Allen movie; it's also the smallest. His pictures seem to be getting tinier and tinier, and after you've seen them they leave nothing but a tinny echo and a bad taste. Anything Else is misanthropy writ small. Allen is too stingy to be generous even with his contempt. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
At a time when so many American movies keep dialogue at a minimum so they can play better overseas, what a delight to listen to smart people whose conversation is like a kind of comic music. Read full review
38
New York PostLou Lumenick
This relentlessly mediocre romantic comedy is basically a pretty arthritic third-generation Xerox of "Annie Hall," with Jason Biggs and Christina Ricci in the old Allen and Keaton parts in a probably quixotic attempt to court the youth market. Read full review
50
USA TodayMike Clark
It's asking a lot of audiences to spend nearly two hours with characters as screen-unfriendly as the ones played by Biggs and Ricci, though both actors (and especially Ricci) do what they're asked to do. Read full review
42
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
It's so irrelevant, unambitious and lazy it almost seems to be thumbing its nose at the daring filmmaker Woody once was. Read full review
30
Washington PostDesson Thomson
The movie doesn't have the energy to be truly horrible. It's too muted and enervated. But it's a somewhat tedious thing to sit through. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Biggs, in particular, seems positively frozen by his imitative efforts -- less Woody than wooden. Ricci is a bit looser, and has the added advantage of hiding behind those saucer-eyes. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Anything Else may not be the second coming of "Annie Hall," but it has more wit and substance than almost every post-college romance that sees the inside of a projection booth. Read full review
38
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
The worst performance in a film that diminishes even the talented Stockard Channing is given by Allen. He's never written a more unpleasant, vapid or irredeemable character for himself, and he makes it worse by overplaying. Read full review
70
SlateDavid Edelstein
Anything Else feels driven. It's like a rant from a therapist's couch--angry, unmediated, free-associational, unleavened by sentiment or compassion. And it's something else that Allen hasn't been lately: funny. Read full review
50
TV Guide MagazineAngel Cohn
The film founders during a series of uncomfortable scenes involving Biggs and DeVito, whose performance verges on painful caricature, but Ricci is adorable and delivers Allen's sharp dialogue with real flare. Read full review
50
Washington PostStephen Hunter
Two Woody Allens, two kvetching, whining, neurotic incompetents bungling their lives . . . that's one too many Woody Allens. Read full review
50
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
A pastiche so derivative and pointless, it leaves you wishing Allen had not bothered. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
On the plus side are engaging performances by Jason Biggs and Christina Ricci. On the minus side is . . . everything else. Read full review
10
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Too labored to be romantic and too derivative to be funny.
25
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
This movie is wretched, condescending, and sad, like watching an elderly man spend more than 100 minutes tapping his arm for the youth vein -- which he never finds. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
This seemingly good idea results in disaster. Allen has no insight into the current generation of young people, and his film is just a jumbled rehash of themes and motifs that he's explored elsewhere. Read full review
75
Baltimore SunChris Kaltenbach
With Anything Else, Woody Allen proves himself an old dog capable of thinking up some new tricks. Read full review
30
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
The film's hatred of Ricci and Channing and its affectionate tolerance of the hero's mousy hypocrisy and his mentor's negativity are familiar Allen motifs, but the faint echoes of his best work only make this one seem grimmer. Read full review
30
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
Being a cultural icon is a time-limited occupation; after a while, the culture moves on, and if you don't move with it, you end up with a movie like Anything Else. Read full review
25
PremiereAlex Kranz
The dialogue itself is not interesting or funny. Ostensibly sophisticated remarks--lazy references to Freud or Dostoevsky or whatever--pack no dramatic or intellectual weight. Read full review
60
NewsweekDavid Ansen
Relieved of his courting duties, Allen gives his funniest performance in ages. Read full review
30
The New YorkerDavid Denby
Feels like a pointlessly nagging play.
30
The A.V. ClubNathan Rabin
A joylessly plodding film that cannibalizes Allen's classics of the '70s and '80s while managing only a few decent one-liners. Read full review
40
Village VoiceMichael Atkinson
I have a friend who insists Allen should make a western, if only because the demands of genre might force the birth of new ideas. His movies do create and service an innovation-free comfort zone that makes most TV sitcoms seem adventurous. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleSteve Davis
A bittersweet experience. It leaves you asking for more, even knowing that nothing more is forthcoming. Read full review
50
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
One reasonably dependable pleasure in Woody Allen's films is that he uses old-time songs, in moderately jazzed-up versions, on his soundtracks. Read full review
60
EmpireNick Dawson
Allen’s films have always had a feeling of melancholy to them, but this -- the first film Allen has written after the fall of the Twin Towers -- harbours a sense of dark unsettlement amid the neurotic romantic comedy. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Because Allen hasn't lost his knack for slapstick with a sting, Anything Else hits its mark more often than not. Read full review
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