Verdict: Not a total return to his glory days, but at least it's headed in the right direction.

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Anything Else” is Woody Allen's best movie in years. Given most of his recent movies, that may not be saying much, but this film has the tang — if not the overall brilliance — of his great work from the '70s, '80s and early '90s.

As he did in “Celebrity” and “Bullets Over Broadway,” he hands the “Woody Allen” role to someone else. “American Pie's” Jason Biggs plays Jerry Falk, a struggling comedy writer in Manhattan. Allen plays a Woody Allen-ish schoolteacher named Dobel, who's also interested in comedy writing. They meet at an audition, both hopeful, both a little scared. But, as Jerry points out in one of his to-the-camera comments, “I was 21. He was 60.”

Dobel becomes a kind of idiosyncratic mentor to Jerry, who can't help but be fascinated by this strange little man who has opinions on everything from comedy writing to the death camps to, most especially, Jerry's girlfriend, Amanda (Christina Ricci).

She's the sort of self-centered, careless man-trap who captivates almost every male she meets. Including Jerry, who leaves his longtime live-in for her. “Don't worry,” Amanda says when Jerry feels guilty about sneaking around. “I'm used to being the other woman.”

“Anything Else” doesn't have much of a plot. It's about Jerry and Amanda, Jerry and Dobel, Jerry and Amanda's overbearing mother (Stockard Channing), who moves in “temporarily,” Jerry and his pathologically silent shrink, Jerry and his sorry excuse for an agent (Danny DeVito), whom he can't bring himself to dump. And the usual Allen obsessions come up — unhealthy relationships, fear of death, cancer, anti-Semitism and, of course, Manhattan.

A lot of “Anything Else” is familiar: the jazz-classics soundtrack, the simple white-on-black opening credits, the eclectic ensemble cast of intriguing actors. But there are changes, too. When did you ever think you'd see Allen cradling a Russian military rifle or speaking glowingly of L.A.? Another difference: Typically, Woody shows us the good and bad sides of his characters: Michael Caine's charming cad in “Hannah and Her Sisters,” Martin Landau's equivocating eye doctor in “Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

But here, Jerry is the only generally likable character. Amanda is a selfish user (though Ricci makes her endlessly fascinating and irresistibly beautiful). Her mother is obsessed with her age. And Dobel isn't exactly lovable.

Not having anyone besides Jerry to root for is limiting, and it makes the movie feel long and a little listless. Even so, Allen can still churn out some of the best one-liners in movies, and the acting is, as always, seamless, with Biggs, Ricci and Channing as standouts.

In such embarrassments as “Hollywood Ending” and “The Curse of the Jade Scorpion,” Allen seemed out of touch with a culture that had changed considerably in the last five or 10 years. In “Anything Else,” he doesn't feel dated as much insular. He presumes there's still an audience that gets references to Camus and Fitzgerald, to “Madame Bovary” and Dostoevski. Yet there's something hopeful in that, well, naivete.

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