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Title: Woody Allen (The Pocket Essentials: Film) by Martin Fitzgerald ISBN: 1-903047-05-6 Publisher: Pocket Essentiials Pub. Date: August, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99

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Average Customer Rating: 1 (1 review)

Rating: 1
Summary: Perfectly shoddy in every way
Comment: Luckily, this book is very small in size, so one can hurl it against the wall or furniture or even the TV set and not do any damage. To be fair, its size is part of its problem--it seems to be part of a series of "Pocket Essentials," books which aim to give a brief overview of a director's work. Allen had almost 30 movies to his credit when this book was written, so cramming that much plot summary and commentary into 90 pages had to be tough. Oddly, it's Interiors that gets the most space (about 5 pages), not Annie Hall or Manhattan.

Once you accept the fact that this will be film commentary lite, however, annoying problems still abound. The author's style is simplistic--it sounds like his first unedited draft is what was published. Sloppy sentence style, typos, and poor word choices (he calls Take the Money and Run a "skit," quite literally, even though it's a 90-minute movie; "adopted" and "adapted" are not the same word) are frequent. Poor research is evident--he claims Allen has worked with only three cinematographers, which is wrong and easily disproved. He also incorrectly claims that Allen's unique credits style started with Annie Hall. Some major plot points are missed, such as the importance of Holly's pregnancy in Hannah and Her Sisters.

Occasionally, the author does express an interersting insight--his discussions of Interiors and Broadway Danny Rose are good. However, this is overall a shoddy production in every way, right down to the physical look of the type. Most revealingly, on the last page, in an annotated bibliography entry, the author criticizes his own work. He refers to a recent Allen biography as "[o]bviously compiled from various thin sources and padded out with background detail, much like the book you now hold in your hands." Avoid this book. I know I will avoid any more in the Pocket Essentials series.