Irrational Man (12A)

two stars

Dir: Woody Allen

With: Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, Parker Posey

Runtime: 95 minutes

WOODY Allen’s latest comedy drama, Irrational Man, confirms his current place as the Simon Cowell of American arthouse. His formats remain the same, ditto the outcomes, with only the young faces changing from production to production. Welcome to the W-Factor, or Cast Got Talent, and be prepared to smile politely but no more.

The outstanding cast in this instance are Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone and Parker Posey, playing a philosophy professor, student and college lecturer respectively. This is the second Allen picture in which Stone has appeared after last year’s Magic In The Moonlight, and the first for Phoenix and Posey. The latter obviously enjoyed the experience because she is reportedly filming another movie with Allen, due in 2016.

The setting this time is a picture-postcard college town in Rhode Island which is all a-quiver with talk of a new professor who will “put Viagra into the philosophy department”. Abe (Phoenix) is a famously brilliant but troubled sort, with hints of tragedy in his background. True to form, he rocks up for his first day sozzled and crumpled in equal measure.

Despite this history, or as she acknowledges because of it, the brilliant and gloriously pretty Jill (Stone) takes a shine to Abe, finding him “so damn interesting”. As luck would have it, Abe likes the original thinking in her essays, and the two start to hang out together. Just as friends, mind. Heaven forbid there should be a relationship between an older man and a younger woman in a Woody Allen picture.

From here the picture ambles from walks in the sunshine to the cool of the classroom where Abe imparts his thoughts on Kierkegaard, Kant and other cats. But always beware, he tells his students, there is a difference between “a theoretical world of philosophical bull**** and real life”.

If only he paid heed to his own teachings. While sitting in a diner one day with Jill, the two eavesdrop on a conversation at the next table where a woman is despairing of losing her children in a custody battle because of a biased judge. What if, Abe muses, he was able to solve this woman’s problems at a stroke by removing the judge from the picture? A relatively good deed by a complete stranger in a rotten world, a crime without punishment?

It is a photo-finish between what is most tiresome: that this is a painfully thin plot premise, or that Allen has used variations of it before in Match Point and Crimes And Misdemeanours. Whatever, the show must go on, with Abe finding himself back in love with life and Jill falling harder for him even as she begins to have doubts. The other person in this menage a trois is not, as you might think, Abe’s considerable ego, but Rita (Posey), a woman of a certain age who would dearly love to leave her stale marriage to run away with Abe. Rita might be less glossy and together than Jill, but she is in her own way far wiser, making her one of Allen’s more interesting female characters of recent years.

On we trot through clues and cliches, lots and lots of the latter. Take your pick from the character of Abe (a tired of life American college professor: like that hasn’t been done to death) to the references to Crime And Punishment which land with all the subtlety of a grand piano falling from a roof. The jokes, such as they are, fail to raise much of a smile, as with a running gag about how Abe’s journalist friend died in Iraq – was it beheading or a bomb? Maybe that sort of thing makes for grand yuks in the ritzier parts of Manhattan.

What fizz there is comes from the cast, and pretty fine they are too. Phoenix is not a million miles from his usual screen persona, but there is a lightness here which suits him. Stone can make even the dullest cinema outings bright. As for whether cast alone is reason enough to plod through Irrational Man, consult your inner philosopher.