guisreis Review of Crisis in Six Scenes

Crisis in Six Scenes (2016)

Brilliant Woody Allen, but why Miley Cyrus, and why so much time?

[7/10 · 2 February 2023]

While sold as a 6-chapter series, this is actually just a very long feature movie by Woody Allen. As it begins, all his impressive skill is very present: those extremely smart and funny dialogues and situations, his (and Elaine May's) brilliant and very natural acting, great core (and also many peripheral) characters. Smart and playful situatons eventually appear again from time to time, but there are two problems that made this production far from being among the best of Woody Allen. The first, and the most serious of them, is Miley Cyrus. Her character Lennie Dale is perhaps too flat and stereotyped, but it could work better with a more skilled actress had been casted. Her acting skills were embarassingly out of step with Allen, May, and also many other actors and actresses in minor roles. And her role was so important, and had so much time on screen... The level of the film/series clearly downgraded since her character appears (although appearing after hilarious scenes played by Allen and May). While many other characters and events were nice, imaginative and funny, the general outcome was also hampered by the film's excessively long length. The artificial strategy of presenting it as a mini-series in six chapters just meant grafting unnecessary time that could be avoided in a more balanced and normal-length movie. Unfortunately, the boring presence of Cyrus (despite her character be praised as charismatic by the others) for so much time led the film to be tiring sometimes, and end in a much more tepid way than it began.