Woody Allen was cancelled, but A Rainy Day in New York is still really great
Woody Allen may have been cancelled, but the standard characters in his romantic comedy movies - with the male lead almost always depicting Allen himself - are alive and well.
I really liked his entry, A Rainy Day in New York (which, due to the corresponding Me Too movement, was actually finished in 2018 but pretty much banned from showing anywhere until it first appeared in Poland in 2019 and not in the U.S. until late 2020). Timothée Chalamet essentially plays the neurotic character Allen used to always play, Elle Fanning does the same with Dianne Keaton’s former job of being one of the few in the room who could keep up with Allen’s franticness, and Selena Gomez is simply her usual tough and adorable self.
It’s a winning formula and probably the last time the troubled director will be able to get a cast of such big-screen prestige. As Substack’s The Reveal noted:
Chalamet and Gomez donated their salaries to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) and Amazon shelved the film entirely, leading a breach-of-contract lawsuit and release from a tiny distributor.
Still, as I attempt to set Allen’s troubles aside, the film comes in somewhere right outside of the top 10 of my favorite Allen movies - around where I rank Match Point (2005), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), and Everyone Says I Love You (1996).
Chalamet plays Gatsby Welles, who decides to show his girlfriend (Fanning) a good time in the city over a weekend away from their upstate New York college. While she’s doing an interview for the school paper with a famous movie director, the rain begins and the couple’s plans get delayed. Gatsby meets the little sister of a former girlfriend (Gomez) and everyone involved gets involved in multiple hijinx.
As with many Allen movies, it would be worth watching even just for the scenes in the rain around the beautiful and cinematic city - only heightening the jazzy romance in the air. Add to that the undeniable quirk and wit of classic era Woody Allen, and this, in my mind, despite mostly very middling reviews, is a great movie.
4.5 out of 5 stars