Grade: C

Verdict: We still prefer his earlier, funnier movies.

Details: Starring Woody Allen, Helen Hunt and Charlize Theron. Directed by Allen. Rated PG-13 for some sexual content. One hour, 42 minutes.

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• Woody Allen pictures and facts

Review: Here's how things have changed in the last 20 years in the movie biz. In the '70s and '80, Woody Allen was the last word in sophisticated comedy. His movies were the perfect place to take a date. In the new millennium, Woody's work has become perfect for your parents — or maybe a visiting foreign student.

Allen's movies have never been mainstream, so he's been unaffected by the doleful dumbing-down of Hollywood comedy. But compare such so-so recent films as “Mighty Aphrodite” or “Manhattan Murder Mystery” to the older “Hannah and Her Sisters” or “Manhattan.” You can't help but think he's gone into some kind of stall.

Which brings us to his new film, a trifle called “The Curse of the Jade Scorpion.” Set in New York in '40s, the movie introduces us to CW Briggs (Allen), a weaselly but successful insurance investigator who always gets his man. But lately, a woman's getting to him.

She's Betty Ann Fitzgerald (Helen Hunt), the new efficiency expert hired to streamline the insurance office. It's a case of hate at first sight. “Never trust a woman who can whistle for her own cab,” mutters CW to a colleague.

Then one night, everyone on staff goes out to dinner for a birthday celebration. As part of the entertainment, CW and Betty Ann are put in a trance by a cheesy nightclub hypnotist (David Ogden Stiers). Unbeknownst to them, he sends them home still under his spell. Soon he's calling CW and ordering him to pull off some major jewel heists — which CW can easily do since he's the one who installed the security systems in the first place.

Meanwhile, back at the insurance agency, CW vows to catch the thief, not knowing that he's trying to catch himself.

It's a clever idea, but that's all it is. The movie never shifts into second gear. Charlize Theron slinks into the picture as the kind of spoiled, sexpot daughter who always turned up in Bogart's '40s films. But she turns out to be little more than a plot device. And the jokes are a mixed bag, with more misses than hits.

A lot of people are making a fuss about pairing the considerably older Allen with the considerably younger Hunt. Funny, no one said a thing when she was paired with Jack Nicholson in “As Good as It Gets” and he's only two years younger than Allen. Anyway, their barbed banter is supposed to echo the they-really-love-each-other zingers from a classic '40s comedy. Say, “His Girl Friday” with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell.

While “Scorpion's” zingers don't have the same zing, the stars' scenes together make you think that somebody should round up some old, lesser-known Roz Russell scripts and remake them with Hunt. As she showed in “What Women Want,” before it got all squishy, she's got a knack for playing crisp corporate climbers who are also closet romantics.

In a way, “Scorpion's” plot could be taken as an apt metaphor for Allen's career. We all want him to be the Woody he was, whether it was in “Bananas” or “Crimes and Misdemeanors.” So, he's stuck chasing himself — not an enviable postion for someone who's been called a genius. But pulling out projects that have the musty whiff of having been in his desk drawer a decade too long isn't going to help.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution