Anyway, I don’t love the film enough to keep at this. But this is fun. We should do it more often. Maybe they need replacements at the Ebert & Roeper show.

Woody has always expressed his misanthropy in his films, often to good effect, but never as explicitly as in “Whatever Works.” In this film, it is as explicit as a direct address, which I read less as playfulness than as lecture – to the audience and also to the female lead, who finally literalizes the function that women have often performed in his films: student.

In “Annie Hall,” it seemed as though Woody was aware of his own hypocrisy when Alvy encourages Annie to take adult education classes so she can qualify as his intellectual equal. In “Manhattan,” Isaac understands that his relationship with Tracy, a 17-year-old Dalton student, is an unserious fling and wisely ends it before she can naively invest too much. When he tries to get her back at the end of the film, we understand that he is being impetuous and selfish. In “Whatever Works,” Boris first turns down Melodie’s advance with just the kind of realistic, self-consciousness you’d expect of a Woody Allen character. But when he later convinces himself that they are meant to be together, he mistakes the teacher-student relationship for romantic destiny, and there is little sense here that Woody is aware that this is a misstep, as he seems to be using it as a rationalization of his biography.

The irony of this film is that it is both the most didactic example of Woody’s misanthropy and a misguided rejection of it. The ways that characters fall in love resemble the kind of inane “Sliding Doors”-isms that Woody has made a career of demystifying. Some of the film’s gags – most notably the one about the homophobic southerner who, whadayaknow, turns out to be gay – actually feel as though pulled out of one of the litany of Woody Allen-lite films made in the 90s (see Ed Burns et al).

Finally, the “Whatever Works” mantra that guides this film is not enough to rationalize the lack of perceptive comedy and ethicality. I can just imagine what Woody of the ’70s might have said of the phrase: “whatever works, as long as it’s not working for Nazis.” Because the obvious problem is that whatever might work for Woody these days doesn’t necessarily work for his love interests or his audience. And from what I know of the way he works, I sort of doubt he’s listening to anyone on the set.