Critics reviews

Rarely has [Allen] come up with something as utterly inconsequential as this collection of rehashed themes, characters, and punchlines... “A Rainy Day in New York” feels like something that belongs in a museum, preferably in storage.

“A Rainy Day In New York” is lowest-tier Allen, certainly unworthy of any perception as the embattled work it has become... As with even the worst of Allen’s films, there is just enough to satiate fans and make the whole thing seem maybe, possibly worth the effort.

This is the 50th movie for the 84-year-old filmmaker, and it plays like a glossy, semi-clever retread of, yes, earlier and better work...[But] even a warmed-over, behind-the-times Woody Allen script is going to contain some choice one-liners, and this is a superb cast that knows how to put the right spin on clever dialogue — even when they’re playing thinly drawn characters in a dated and unnecessary story.

What could stand as his last love letter to the city which made him one of cinema’s most noted auteurs is unfortunately a soggy derivative of his favored tropes, a cast of young principles grinding their gears in archaic characterizations... Sadly, it’s simply one of Allen’s many titles which seems to be going through the motions without anything profound or entertaining to convey.

If one were to come to the defense of "A Rainy Day In New York", one might point out that this is actually a set-up for dramatic irony and the realization that these handsome, experienced men are even needier than their callow young counterparts. Thankfully, no mental gymnastics nor hedging of one’s bets on certain allegations is necessary: This is a bad movie, with maybe two good jokes and some of Allen’s clunkiest direction.

What’s on the menu here is the usual cynicism, overlaid with unconvincing, nostalgic dreaminess. There is one genuinely romantic moment, when Gatsby plays “Everything Happens to Me” on a “family heirloom” grand piano while Chan listens from another room, but “A Rainy Day in New York” squanders that along with its few moments of fun in the service of a set of tired, sour and vindictive propositions about love, youth and, above all, women.

I’m sure Allen apologists will say that "A Rainy Day in New York" was built as a way of self-ridicule with Gatsby’s incredulity towards women always finding older men attractive and filmmakers preying upon ingénues, but nothing in the text suggests that it is. I’d instead posit that this film is a middle finger of his own—one that highlights the vapid cruelty of his world as an admirable quirkiness he loves.

Characters and storylines appear to have been chosen at random by a Woody Allen meme generator... Cinematographer Vittorio Storaro bathes the film in flattering golden light, perhaps in the hope that it might disguise or at least soften the misogyny on screen. This nostalgic aesthetic only makes the film more anachronistic, not exactly making the case for its creator as an artist in touch with contemporary reality.

Allen’s dialogue, always so singularly arch, has curdled into something unbearable... It is at best a simulacrum of a Woody Allen film, at worst a parody of one... Cloying and soulless, A Rainy Day in New York is a washout.

It mostly feels like the filmmaker revisiting his recurrent obsessions (which is fine) but with increasingly more heavy-handed, diminishing returns... Allen’s best contemporary work, from "Annie Hall" to "Manhattan" to "Husbands And Wives," still managed to keep one foot in the present. A feeling underlined by Vittorio Storaro’s warm, amber, nostalgic hues, "A Rainy Day In New York" has both feet firmly planted in the past.

Not great, not hilarious, but not terrible or awful either... In the end, the clue is in the title. If this was on television and there’s only racing on the other side, you’d stick with it. It’s a rainy afternoon film that passes the time pleasantly.

It’s not as bad as you might think, but the fade-to-black that precedes the final credits brings with it the now traditional dull sadness for that lost Allen era in which all this was great... This is like an over-chewed piece of gum: flavourless.