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Review: 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona'
Rated PG-13 for sexuality and smoking
(out of four)
"Vicky Cristina Barcelona"
The Weinstein Co.
Michael Machosky can be reached via e-mail or at 412-320-7901.
Perhaps inevitably, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" indicates some backsliding into a bit of what Allen does worst.
It's about two very different best friends, Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), going on vacation together in Barcelona. Neither is an artist, but both have artistic pretensions -- the newly engaged Vicki is a grad student studying "Catalan identity," and the beautiful, impulsive Cristina likes a volatile artistic temperament in her men.
When they meet the sexy, mysterious artist Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), they're warned to keep clear. His fights with his ex-wife are legendary.
So begins an unlikely love triangle. Cristina wants him; Vicky, at first, thinks she doesn't want him; Juan Antonio wants them both. Then his crazy ex-wife (Penelope Cruz) arrives on the scene after trying to commit suicide, and the roundelay starts whirling around faster.
Allen long has chronicled the love lives of pretentious, self-obsessed pseudo-intellectual twits, and these are some of the most annoying, least interesting yet. Throw in more cliches about passionate, lecherous Euro-trash men, and wildly hot-tempered Latin ladies, and "Vicky Cristina" becomes an eye-roller of epic proportions.
There's also an overbearing narrator who unnecessarily describes what each character is thinking, which often feels like stating the obvious.
Like most Woody Allen movies, it's fast-paced and full of beautiful people. But even though Allen doesn't do punch lines anymore, "Vicky Cristina" could be improved so much by even a little bit of humor.
• In wide release
