I didn´t mean to write a review about Scoop, but after a Google search for something I can´t remember what was anymore, I came to a Marilyn Monroe photo that took me back to this film.

First of all, I´ve seen Scoop more than twice a few years ago and I really like it. I´m sure I can watch it over and over again and it won´t taste like na old rubber joke. Like Scarlett Johansson described it, Scoop’s a good old-fashioned Woody Allen comedy and that´s what I like about it. Perhaps I´m a nostalgic lost case, but if movies like Match Point and Vicky Crsitina Barcelona don´t amaze me, Anything Else, Melinda and Melinda and Scoop, all critically non-acclaimed, work on me like happiness pills.

Scoop is not as great as Allen´s old comedies, but when Match Point doesn´t work compared to Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), Scoop does compared to Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993). Johansson is not Diane Keaton, but her role as Sondra Pransky is not only good – like Jason Biggs does in Anything Else, she brings freshness to the screen as a younger and female version of Allen´s neurotic and comic manners – as pleases those that, like me, prefer Charlotte (Lost in Translation) or Rebecca (Ghost World) than the sex appeal persona. Although the sex appeal is still there. Coming from Allen who said that Johansson is unlike anyone who has come before her, and while she is a much stronger actress in every way, there is a tiny bit of Marilyn Monroe in her zaftig humidity, I suppose that the swimming pool scene where Sondra pretends to be drowing is a sort of homage to Monroe:

*Is there a better song than Swan Lake, Op.20 Suite – 3. Danse des petits cygnes (in this movie played by Leon Spierer) to a comic murder mystery?