Blue About Blue Jasmine

I have to open by saying that I was disappointed with Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine.

Maybe I'm feeling the same thing critics did who saw The Lone Ranger this summer, expecting something at least somewhat different, then getting...a different vision from the director.

I was disappointed first because, unlike his last two movies (Midnight in Paris and To Rome with Love), which were devastatingly funny, Blue Jasmine almost never is.

Okay, deal with that.

Second, I always want someone to attach to, to empathize with, to care about and root for.

In Blue Jasmine, you feel like it's supposed to be the main character, Jasmine (not her real name), played well by Cate Blanchett, but I dislike her from the opening scene -- where's she's annoying an older woman she doesn't know with her life story while on a plane.  I never got over it.  Call it personal.

But it seems Woody never tries very hard to make her likable.

Her life is as blue as the title, and the song that is the signature (and in the background, I think) through out -- Blue Moon.   She has "no prospects" and is forced to live with her sister, Ginger (goes with Jasmine, right?), played with some vulnerability and zest by Sallie Hawkins, in San Francisco.

After Barcelona, Paris, and Rome, San Francisco doesn't quite lead in this movie the same way (the setup is there with the opening plane trip), with cuts back to Jasmine's former life on the East Coast with the sleazy, oily dead husband Hal (played with sufficient oil by Alec Baldwin).

The pieces are all there.

But, despite the director's best twisting to gain tension, we aren't really hoping Jasmine lands the next husband -- saving her from the "menial" (her word) work she needs to do to get some kind of life.  

In the end, we don't care.  And Woody leaves us not caring.

Maybe next time.