Search
What's Hot
Day-by-Day Fall Schedule
Celebs With Their Pets
Shows We Lost This Season
Idol Runner-Up Takes Pay Cut?

Match Point

2005, Movie, R, 124 mins

Match Point: Review

MATCH POINT
starstarstarstar
Hailed as Woody Allen's best film in a decade — which sets a very low bar — and as a new direction in his work — which appears to boil down to the fact that it's set in London instead of New York — this thin chronicle of bad behavior among the rich and self-obsessed is painfully derivative, borrowing wholesale from Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy and echoing Allen's own CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS (1989). Affable second-string tennis pro Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) knows there's no future for him in the game but can't figure out what to do instead when a string of lucky breaks conspire to change his life. Befriended by a private student, wealthy Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode), Chris' impeccable manners and affable nature quickly win over the entire Hewett clan, even prickly matriarch Eleanor (Penelope Wilton). Tom's sprightly sister, Chloe (Emily Mortimer), falls in love with him, and her father, international businessman Alec (Brian Cox), offers his future son-in-law a position at one of his companies. Everything would be perfect were it not for Tom's American fiancee, aspiring actress Nola (Scarlett Johansson), a sexpot who drinks too much and flirts compulsively. She and Chris embark on an impulsive affair, but luck steps in again: Tom breaks off the engagement and Nola vanishes. With temptation safely out of the way, Chris gets back on track: He and Chloe buy a spectacular apartment, Chris rises steadily at work and Alec hints that there's no limit to how far he can go. The only sour note is Chloe's obsession with becoming pregnant, which turns their sex life into a regimented chore. And then Chris bumps into Nola at a museum. They rekindle their reckless relationship, and when Nola becomes pregnant, Chris faces the prospect of losing everything. As is true in the bulk of Allen's films starting in the 1990s and later, the story is rudimentary and the characters drawn so broadly that even actors capable of better are reduced to shrill, one-note performances. The London locations are a change of pace (Allen originally intended to set the story in New York, but was unable to get financing in the U.S.), but they're the same kind of spacious, upscale digs everyone — from billionaires to starving artists — inhabits in Allen's New York films. Even the ironic ending feels insincere — calculated to show off the art direction. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
Are You Watching?
Match Point
Loading ...
Advertisement

Our Partners

Advertisement

Related Websites

You might be also interested in the following websites:

Most Popular TV Shows

  1. American Idol
  2. NCIS
  3. Big Bang Theory
  4. Voice
  5. Person of Interest
more popular tv shows

Most Popular Celebrities

  1. Jessica Simpson
  2. Khloe Kardashian
  3. Kate Middleton
  4. Maria Menounos
  5. Kim Kardashian
more popular celebrities

Most Popular Movies

  1. Men In Black 3
  2. Avengers
  3. Battleship
  4. The Dictator
  5. Dark Shadows
more popular movies

Top Videos

  1. The Bachelorette
  2. Revenge
  3. Keeping Up With the Kardashian...
  4. Keeping Up With the Kardashian...
  5. Days of our Lives
more top videos