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Scoop
Rated PG-13 for some sexual content;
Writer-director Allen takes the kind of role he has tailored for himself for decades, here without a trace of romance for himself.
He's neurotic magician Sid Waterman, a role that draws on his lifelong interest in prestidigitation, which also was a key plot point in his neglected play, "The Floating Light Bulb."
While doing his magic act, Waterman encourages the participation of an audience member, Sondra Pransky (Scarlett Johansson), an American student and aspiring news reporter studying in London.
She steps into his on-stage closet, where she's to vanish for a moment. Through an inexplicable scrambling of spiritual forces, she encounters the newly deceased investigative reporter Joe Strombel (Ian McShane).
He hands her the scoop he'd like to pursue himself: The much-sought Tarot Card Killer is man-about-town Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman), son of a lord. With Sid posing as her father, Sondra starts sleuthing by placing herself in Peter's path.
Though it brushes lightly over the British classism that Allen examined more closely in his recent "Match Point," "Scoop" concentrates on minor-key mirth and crime in the spirit of his crime comedies "Manhattan Murder Mystery" and "Small Time Crooks."
Allen is marking time here, not diamond-cutting. He develops only the surface of characters and relationships in the service of plot. He uses fog and creamy colors, bits of frustration with youthful ignorance (Sondra never heard of Jack the Ripper) and passages of great music such as "Sabre Dance."
Most atmospherically stirring is his reliance on Tchaikovsky's "Dance of the Four Little Swans" from "Swan Lake," used previously to evocative effect in Terrence McNally's "Love! Valour! Compassion!"
- In wide release.
