Jodie Markell

While it is getting harder and harder to indulge an aging Woody Allen's enduring fantasy of beautiful young women falling in love with him in his movies, the man's comedy instincts are as sharp as ever in "Hollywood Ending."

The sophisticated screwball jaunt stars Allen as washed-up movie director Val Waxman, whose hypochondria reaches new extremes when he's rescued from deodorant commercial hell by his producer ex-wife (Tea Leoni) and given one last shot by making a $60 million blockbuster. Panicked at the prospect of making or breaking his career -- not to mention working for his ex and the Hollywood greaseball she left him for -- Val goes psychosomatically blind.

Rather than quit the picture and doom himself to showbiz purgatory, he decides he just won't let on. He'll wing it and hope his cast and crew see his apparent ineptitude as visionary eccentricity.

Continue reading: Hollywood Ending Review