MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Fear’ Echoes Woody Allen, Minus the Laughs

Todd Solondz, the young writer-director-star of “Fear, Anxiety and Depression,” (Goldwyn Pavilion) wants to be the new Woody Allen so badly, he should walk around with a sandwich board emblazoned, “Generic Woody: All the urban neuroses, One tenth the cost.” And, unfortunately, less than one tenth the laughs. Of “Interiors.”

Solondz, a recent NYU graduate, has a subject ripe for satire: the proto-punk Lower Manhattan scene, not quite-starving artists in a landscape of creeping gentrification. But, with all this Allen mimicry, he’s like Rich Little run amok. He sees everything through a double screen: the world as a Woody Allen movie.

Solondz appropriates everything: glasses, shaggy wardrobe, nervous oververbal dialogues, anhedonia and self-pity. He uses that draggy, nasal whine. He flops his arms, stammers. At one point, he even does Woody’s little blissed out mating dance: those stiff-legged, dopey, smirky pirouettes. His own frizzy mop is black, but otherwise, he’s copied everything but the freckles. And the soul.

Given this performance, one might expect the major character, Ira Ellis (Solondz), to be a young film school graduate obsessed with Woody Allen. But Solondz shows greater hubris. Instead, Ira is fixated on Samuel Beckett; he’s a struggling playwright, a nebbish-in-excelsis who inexplicably gets bad plays produced at the Public Theater.

Ira’s neurasthenic roundelay of sexual encounters also swarms with Allen archetypes. His stud-buddy Jack, the poseur pop painter (Max Cantor) is Solondz’s Tony Roberts. His clinging, sniveling girlfriend Sharon (Jill Wisoff) suggests Louise Lasser. The coldly promiscuous punk performance artist, Junk (Jane Hamper), whom Ira vainly pursues, is not an obvious Diane Keaton clone--though Jack’s failed actress girlfriend Janice (Alexandra Gersten) is in the ballpark. And there’s a smarmy yuppie success named Donny (Stanley Tucci), who suggests any number of Allen nemeses from Paul Simon to Alan Alda.

Some of this is clever, but little of it is funny. Solondz has the husk of Woody, but not the heart or the mechanics. The movie is frenetic, pushy, thin, obvious--and Solondz’s comic sense tends toward overblown, over-telegraphed slapstick.

But, though “Fear, Anxiety and Depression” (Times-rated mature for theme and language) is a pretty complete failure, its stabs at wit, Angst and Manhattan occasionally nudge their targets and cinematographer Stefan Czapsky (“Vampire’s Kiss”) and Solondz get some zippy-stylish long-take scenes and sidewalk tracking shots. And Tucci, Gersten and Cantor have their moments. Unfortunately for all of them, Woody still owns the franchise.