Cafe Society (12A)

three stars

Dir: Woody Allen

With: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Ken Stott

Runtime: 96 minutes

SOME 47 films in and now 80 years old, no-one is ever going to get rich betting on something new and radical entering the oeuvre of Woody Allen. The next Straight Outta Compton will not come from him. Ditto an all-female reboot of Rambo. While that tendency towards uniformity might be a failing to some, to others it is a welcome comfort, a big woolly cardigan in a cold, cold, world.

Allen’s latest, Cafe Society, should be viewed in such a light. A romantic comedy set in 1930s Hollywood, it contains all the familiar attributes of his pictures, from white on black credits playing out to a jazz track, to beautiful women beguiling helpless men. It does not break any mould, and it fails to go the distance even though it is just 96-minutes long, but it is a lovely watch nonetheless, with the added attraction of seeing Jesse Eisenberg truly coming into his own as the heir to Allen.

The picture opens at a Hollywood party where a hotshot agent, Phil Stern (Steve Carell) is holding court. Stern is expecting a very important call, because that’s what very important people like him do. When called to the phone, however, the summons turns out to be from his sister in New York. Her son Bobby (Jesse Eisenberg) wants to try his luck in California. Might uncle Phil help him out with some work? Phil does a very good job of hiding his pleasure at the prospect.

After the kid turns up day after day at his office, Phil finds him the odd job to do. More importantly, as far as Bobby is concerned, he asks one of his personal assistants, Vonnie (Kristen Stewart) to show him around town. Lonely and fearing he has made a terrible mistake in trading New York for LA, the cynical, clear-eyed, head-screwed-on Vonnie is just the guide to La-La land that Bobby needs. Why, he could even fall in love with her. Only trouble is, Vonnie already has a boyfriend.

Ah, unrequited love – as familiar a feature in Allen’s films as the Manhattan skyline and a sax on the soundtrack. Will our nervy hero ever get the girl? Will she see that she is better off with him? And is there anyone in Hollywood who has ever turned down an invitation to appear in a Woody Allen film?

The latter question occurs when looking at the typically stellar cast, mixed with plenty of up and coming talent, Allen has once more assembled. Besides relatively old hands such as Carell, there is Corey Stoll (House of Cards) as Bobby’s gangster brother, Blake Lively (The Age of Adaline), and Scotland’s Ken Stott, who plays Bobby’s father as if to the New York manor born.

The strong supporting cast, like the gorgeous cinematography by the triple Oscar-winning Vittorio Storaro (The Last Emperor, Reds, Apocalypse Now) is a pleasure to behold. There is great value, too, in watching Stewart and Eisenberg reunited after American Ultra and Adventureland. These two have a genuine chemistry which fizzes in every picture they are in together. Stewart is outstanding as the slightly tom-boyish young woman who reckons she has everyone’s number.

But it is Eisenberg who is the main reason to hand over your cash to see Cafe Society this weekend. The Squid and the Whale star has not always made the right career choices of late (Batman v Superman, for example, and the increasingly silly Now You See Me movies) but when it comes to Woody Allen films, as he showed in 2012’s To Rome With Love, he is a perfect fit. He could so easily fall into doing an impersonation of Allen, but with a little tweak here and there he makes each line, each gesture, indisputably his own. His delivery and timing are as good as, if not better, than Allen’s, and he is more than ready to step up to the narrator role (which Allen takes here). Allen has always had his muses; in Eisenberg he has found a brother in charms.