Starring Woody Allen, Kirstey Alley, Judy Davis, Elizabeth Shue, Billy Crystal, Bob Balaban, Demi Moore, Stanley Tucci, Richard Benjamin, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Amy Irving, Robin Williams, Julie Kavner, Mariel Hemingway, Eric Bogosian and just about everybody else. Written and directed by Woody Allen.
Harry Bloch (Allen) is experiencing writer's block. His last novel was an autobiographical tale of him and experiences with his last wife (Irving), and the affair he had with her sister (Davis), and how he dropped both to go after a cute young aspiring writer (Shue) infactuated with his imagination. Then a fellow writer and friend (Crystal) meets the young writer, and steals her away. He has been starting new stories, but is unable to finish them. Harry has been married three times, but alway blows it because he never remains faithful. His first wife was beautiful, but he lost interest in her, and had numerous affairs. Harry made that into his first successful novel. His second wife (Alley) started as his shrink, but dropped him as a patient so they could go out, and eventually married him and gave him his only son. But, Harry got bored, and had an affair with a patient of his wife. When she found out, she dumped him too. Big surprise, he put this into another a novel too.
At this point in his life, Harry has few friends, since he has alientated everyone close to him by exposing their lives in an unflattering light through his novels. He is about to be honoured for his writing achievements by the university that, early in his life, threw him out before graduation. But he is having no luck in finding someone to go with him to share this honour. Everyone from his past is too angry or unable to find the time to go with him. His pretty young writer is now planning to marry that writer friend, who Harry imagines as the Keeper of the Underworld, inhabited by TV Evangelists, film critics, NRA gun nuts, right wing idealogues and lots of nudity. Eventually, a friend (Balaban) and a hooker accompany Harry to his ceremony, with unexpected twists along the way. Harry eventually discovers some things about himself as he makes his way to the ceremony.
Throughout the film, much of the action is illustrated through characters in Harry's books. For instance, the film begins with a scene from his novel where his wife's sister (Dreyfuss playing Davis) is getting it on with the main character (Benjamin playing Allen). The "Deconstructing" part of the film title refers to trying to analyse Harry's life and motivations through the characters in his books. Occasionally, his characters come to life and talk to Harry, trying to explain and critique the way he lives. This device is sometimes hard to follow, and not always successful. The film examines how much of life is created by our imagination, and how reality and perception are often blurred. It also looks at how a writer's (or possibly a filmaker's) work blurs the line between imagination and the artist's own life. Harry himself says "I'm no good at life", and a friend adds, "But you write well."
The film also adopts a harder and meaner tone than what we expect from a Woody Allen film (Husbands and Wives excepted). Allen usually plays a neurotic, loveable but mixed up guy worried about his relationships with women. Harry treats his wives and friends poorly, and prefers the company of whores because he doesn't have to worry about making conversation with them. He exacts revenge on those in his life by writing about them in his novels, embellishing his own character and adding nasty traits to the fictional characters that represent those that have left him. The script is chalk full of the usual great lines that Allen comes up with. For example, Harry tells his sister's husband "I think you're the opposite of a paranoid - you go around with the delusion that people like you." The performances in the film are often good, but usually too brief. Standing out are Alley as his bitter second wife, who gets back at Harry through his son, Shue as his sweet and generous groupie who Harry discovers he loves right after she leaves him, and Davis as his third wive's sister he had an affair with, who now is in hot water because the details of their affair is in Harry's novel for all to see. If you are a fan of Allen, you will likely enjoy this - the crowd I was with certainly did. But if you don't like Woody, this one will drive you to the exits.
