Woody Allen's 'Irrational Man' review: Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone get stuck in philosophical muck

Woody Allen's recent films can be divided into two camps. There's the fully formed ideas, like Blue Jasmine and Midnight in Paris. Then, you have the rushed plots of Magic In The Moonlight or To Rome With Love that seem to exist merely because Allen can't go a year without making a movie. Sadly, Irrational Man falls into the second group, even if it is a better final product than either of those films.

Irrational Man is set in a world untouched by Allen's camera – a New England college campus. Joaquin Phoenix fumbles his way into a Woody Allen movie as “conservative, in a liberal sort of way” philosophy professor Abe Lucas, a drunk womanizer who should have grown up in the 1960s. Instead, he finds himself hopelessly out of place at a 2015 college campus with two women already rushing to his arms. There's the age-appropriate science professor Rita (Parker Posey), who sees Abe as a way out of her loveless marriage. The other woman is student Jill (Emma Stone), who can't find the same intellectual excitement that Abe gives her with her own boyfriend, Roy (Jamie Blackley).

This all appears to be set-up for another Woody Allen movie about a May-December romance, with someone eventually figuring out that life can't go on this way, we need to return to reality, blah blah blah. But then, Allen decides to throw a curveball and, almost out of the blue, figures out that he hasn't made a crime caper like Crimes and Misdemeanors or Match Point in a few years. So, he figures out how to get a murder involved. It turns out that killing a family court judge is the only thing that can reawaken Abe from his doldrums, both sexually and philosophically.

Therefore, Irrational Man can only feel like a mish-mash of the film experiments Allen has done over his five decades plus in the business. Once he presents these ideas, there isn't much going on in between each action. The plot gets stuck in the mud, with the wheels spinning until Allen figures out how to get out of the ditch. How many people can Jill talk to before ultimately making a decision on her own? How many actual lessons of philosophy do we need to sit through before we can get back to entertainment? Allen might love to throw names like Dostoyevsky, Satre and others around – which he has since the day he started making films – but we don't go to the movies to sit in class.

While acting is usually what helps lift Allen films, Phoenix doesn't seem to be quite interested. This is either really good acting on his part – especially in the first act when Abe is completely disinterested in everything anyway – or just reveals that he isn't right for an Allen movie. Phoenix is always more engaging when he gets to be physical and into a unique character. Here, he's a pot-bellied college professor mumbling Allen's dialogue. It seems nearly impossible to believe that women would be falling all over this drunk, especially in his pre-murderer phase. After the big twist, he becomes more energetic, as if becoming a whole new character.

Stone does fit the film much better. Like in Magic in the Moonlight, she's filmed beautifully by cinematographer Darius Khondji, with close-ups that make it easy to get lost in her big eyes. She fumbles a bit during the big dramatic third, but she's much more comfortable earlier in the film. So far, her collaboration with Allen hasn't turned out great, but hopefully he can plug her into his next serious project.

There's not much of a supporting cast of course, as the film is stripped down to just 90 minutes, so there are few opportunities for other actors to take the pressure off Stone and Phoenix. Posey is a bit underutilized and we can only hope that her role in Allen's 2016 film is bigger. Blakely isn't impressive at all, playing a thankless role that just happened to be there.

Even at 90 minutes, Irrational Man still feels a bit on the long side. Yes, we can listen in on an Allen-written dinner conversation all day, but eventually the plot has to move somewhere. It certainly makes you wish that the film was told entirely through one perspective, rather than switching between Stone and Phoenix. (Yes, this is kind of a callback to Melinda and Melinda, which isn't exactly a movie Allen should be rushing to remind us of.) The movie is a hodgepodge, but at least it's entertaining. Its lesson is that not all great experiences come from textbooks and, perhaps, that not all great experiences come from the movies.

screenshot from YouTube trailer

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