18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Woody's Greek Fantasy. Warm and Funny. Buy It., May 7, 2005
This review is from: Mighty Aphrodite (DVD)
`Mighty Aphrodite', written, directed, and starring Woody Allen seems to be the kind of movie Allen makes after he is worn out doing a strictly realistic, mostly serious movie such as `Crimes and Misdemeanors', `Hannah and Her Sisters', and `Husbands and Wives'. Unlike these excellent seriocomic works, `Mighty Aphrodite' flies off into a world of fantasy similar to the crazy / inventive situations in `Zellig' and `A Midsummer's Night Sex Comedy'.
Allen brings along with him his usual band of big name actors taking off from more remunerative roles to have some fun with this lighthearted comedy. As usual, heavyweights such as F. Murray Abraham, Claire Bloom, Jack Warden, and Olympia Dukakis have such small roles that you hardly notice they are there until they are off screen. In the case of Abraham and Dukakis and Allen stock player David Ogden Stiers, this anonymity is heightened by the fact that they are playing masked members of a Greek chorus, filmed in a ruined Roman amphitheater, in Italy, according to the location credits.
This movie was done for Mirimax and a sizable number of new names appear among the film's executive producers, although I am certain Allen still has his hands firmly on the artistic reins for the filming of the movie. I have no idea which of these new names represents `Sweetland Films', but their only contribution seems to have been a slightly less austere credit crawl at the end of the flick.
Aside from Allen, all of the really heavy lifting on the screen was done by title character actor Mira Sorvino, and it is beyond me how she was nominated for the supporting actress Academy Award and not in the lead actress category, although I suspect it did improve her chances of winning in the lesser category, which she did.
Of Allen's two most important movie subjects, love and death, love is certainly the main issue in this movie, signaled by the fact that Aphrodite is the name of the ancient Greek god of love, represented in this flick by Sorvino's character who is a prostitute and pornographic movie actress who wants to get out of that life and settle down in a more normal setting.
Allen plays a successful New York City sportswriter who gets connected with Sorvino when he and his wife decide to adopt a baby boy, and Allen becomes obsessed with the identity of the real mother, who turns out to be Sorvino. While Allen tries to set Sorvino up with a farmer turned boxer turned farmer, his wife (Carter) hooks up with a business partner (Peter Weller) who threatens to break up their marriage.
While there are a few brief moments of apparent danger when Sorvino's pimp threatens Allen's life if Sorvino quits, the pimp is bought off with nothing more than a pair of courtside tickets to a Knicks game. While the main `realistic' plot is pretty improbable as it is, the real silliness is going on in asides to a full masked Greek chorus very similar to what you would find in productions of plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Thrown into this absurdity is Jack Warden playing a modern blind man named Tiresius encountered on the streets of New York. The joke is that Tiresius is the name of a character in Sophocles' `Oedipus Rex' who makes the prophecy that Oedipus will kill his father. In Allen's version, Tiresius simply clues Allen into the fact that his wife is fooling around with her business partner.
The invocations of the Greek choruses get even more silly as the movie progresses, with the chorus appearing in modern New York near the end of the film, bursting into renditions of Cole Porter and tunes from other modern composers.
Like `Zellig', there is no attempt to avoid straining credulity. Near the end of the movie, Sorvino is rescued from her life of sin by a totally improbable `deux ex machina', which Allen glorifies by simply describing it as such in the voice-over.
This movie is about as close as Allen ever comes after `Annie Hall' to returning to the silliness of early movies such as `Bananas' and `Sleeper'. Unlike the early gag fests, you really feel for the characters in this movie. You don't want Allen to break up with his wife and you want Sorvino to get out of her sex business. And, we are much happier at the end of the movie than we are at the end of `Crimes and Misdemeanors' where a killer escapes justice and the nebbish gets cheated out of his girlfriend.
This is not one of Allen's very best movies, but it is in the upper half. Sorvino's performance is definitely worth the price of admission.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Damn what a good film, June 12, 2001
This review is from: Mighty Aphrodite (DVD)
There seem to be three camps when it comes to Woody Allen. (1) People who love his earlier works and villify his most recent films (2)People who love all of his films (3) People who hate Woody Allen, his films, and anything else related to him. I belong to the second group, and like most of his films. Mighty Aphrodite is a great movie, featuring the performance that put Mira Sorvino on the map. This film also contains a great performance by Michael Rappaport, who has gone on to do more stellar work with Allen. Every time I watch this movie I laugh. If anything, see this film for the Greek chorus led by F. Murray Abraham. Like most of Allens more recent works this film is funny and wacky, while at the same time you don't leave the movie feeling as if you've lost brain cells by watching it.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant, February 1, 1999
By A Customer
This movie is brilliant. First of all, it purposely follows the structure of a Greek tragedy, and advertises the fact by incorporating a Greek Corus into the flick, which is just so cool. Cassandra appears in the film as does Tyresius (sp?) the blind seer of, ummm... was it Thebes or Troy? Anyway, it's a movie about acts and consequences, revolving around a husband and wife. Yeah Allen writes a lot about relationships, yes disfunction or insecurity are often a aspect, but what some folks don't realize is that he's not writing about "insecurity", or "neurosis" or whatever- he's writing about life and how wonderful, ridiculous, and painful it can be-and how so much of it can thankfully be laughed at. If you want to say he has a shtick, then that's it.
Allen's character in this movie is actually one of his most appealing. The Greek tradgedy model is great, because his character only makes two "hubris" inspired mistakes, one of which is simply the desire to find his adopted son's birth mother. This two "decisions of excess", you could say, are the only "typical" Woody Allen devices his character uses.
Mira Sorvino is incredible. She's not a "hooker with a heart of gold", not by any means. She's not your typical jaded-whore type either, she just lacks any moral squeamishness when it comes to what she does. She's actually a pretty complex character, so many usually discordant aspects live side-by-side, without being cliche.
The ending has a wrap-up from the chorus leader that kind of tells you why the movie is so great, in case you didn't get it. You know, but for the frank sexual talk and situations, this is Allen's sweetest film.
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