Deconstructing Harry Reviews

Deconstructing Harry is by far Woody Allen's darkest and most revealing movie, and it doesn't exactly paint a flattering portrait of him, but it's also funny (although not his funniest) and has a great cast and interesting style that make it worth seeing for fans of Allen.

One of Woody Allen's more forgettable films.

Suffering from writer's block and eagerly awaiting his writing award, Harry Block remembers events from his past and scenes from his best-selling books as characters, real and fictional, come back to haunt him.

Woody Allen fascinates me. His neuroses and tics annoy me and yet I'm often challenged by his work to think of current events or politics in different ways. He sucks me in despite my aversion to him. So I found this movie most satisfying. It's populated with so many characters, both known to Harry from his everyday life and created by him in his writing.

These characters mostly seek to dig up the dirt and call him out on all of his BS. Since that's the kind of thing I think should happen to Woody Allen more often it was highly satisfying. It went on too long and rather overstayed its welcome but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Suffering from writer's block and eagerly awaiting his writing award, Harry Block remembers events from his past and scenes from his best-selling books as characters, real and fictional, come back to haunt him.

It's Woody, so that's enough for me.

This quickly became one of my favorite films by Woody Allen that I've seen so far (and at this point I've seen 26 of them). It's fragmented with purpose. The editing style really blew me away. In the middle of a sentence there could be a jump cut and you're in a whole new part of the conversation. He does plenty of things to have the audience participate in the film as Harry Block. Harry's not a great character to be, which might be why some people are so uncomfortable with this film. Harry writes his life into stories that are either completely fantastical or follow the line of magical realism. Completely fantastical would be the scene where he goes down to Hell to retrieve the woman he loves, then meets Billy Crystal down there, who's actually Satan. Magical realism would be the segment where Robin Williams finds himself to be out of focus. All of this serves the purpose so that we can understand the life of Harry. It opens with an angry woman going to an apartment, and it keeps going back and showing different jump cuts throughout the credits. It's really interesting because I don't believe he's done jump cuts like this before, so to show he's going all out in being different he also puts it in the middle of his opening credits, which are usually the golden age of Hollywood style of credits in the front of the film. On top of this there's more cursing here than any other Woody Allen film I have seen. It's truly darker than most of his films. There's a scene where he kidnaps his own son, drives up to a ceremony where they give him an award with a hooker, and his friend dies in the back seat. They arrive at the place with his dead friend still in the back seat. It's a pretty strange scene to laugh at since his kid's probably about 10 years old and dealing with death on this level. There's also a scene where Harry's in school teaching his son about why their penises look different. Harry's the kind of guy who likes hookers, loves sex, but doesn't want a real relationship. What's the point? So two people can become like brother and sister? No, no, no. That's not what he wants. Love's out of the question, or so he thought before he realized he was in love with Fay, but he told her never to fall in love with him so she ends up marrying Billy Crystal's character. When the women in his life come back they yell at him about the stories he wrote. How one of the women he slept with was his wife's sister and they had sex at a family outing. Well his ex-wife never found out until the book came out. Harry keeps telling people his books are lightly inspired by his own life, but when you look at it there are only minute differences that don't even matter. One of the stories is about him having sex with a hooker for the first time, then afterwords death knocks on his door calling for the person who lives at the place, which isn't actually him, but that doesn't really matter. On top of all of this, Deconstructing Harry also has one of the best cast list for a Woody Allen film. He tends to cast well, but this one was just incredible: Robin Williams, Elizabeth Shue, Bob Balaban, Eric Bogosian, Paul Giammati, Billy Crystal, Kirstie Alley, Stanley Tucci, Demi Moore, Tobey Maguire, Julia-Louise Dreyfus, and Joan Allen. It's ridiculous. And the whole point is to connect with this messed up character who needs to discover how to get his life to work on some level. He has had writers block since Fay left him, so there's obviously going to be the scene of realization that inspires him to write again. Deconstructing Harry is a truly great film by Woody Allen that shows off his talent as a completely unique narrative filmmaker.

Um dos filmes mais pessoais e criativos da carreira de Woody Allen. Uma verdadeira obra-prima.

certainly top-tier woody allen, but he still isn't my favorite

My favorite Woody Allen film. It is sharp and incredibly funny.

one of the top movies ever

Some funny parts, but this shows us a totally different Woody Allen film. Rude, gross, and even vulgar. Deconstructing Harry lacks the intelligent humour, nice actings and great script of Allen Classics and like Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex, is just a bunch of sketches, here there are in a story, but in a less interesting way. Worst Allen film I've seen, just lacks everything we love about him.

I am a little surprised that so many critics were put off and offended by this one. It was indeed the late 1990s, when our relative peace and prosperity allowed only for outrage about things that mattered very little and the Dsneyfication of American culture was in its ascent.

Mildly entertaining and somewhat boring. 6/10

Masu zivahniji i zanimljiviji od Crimesa. Histericne zene are so faniii.

Finally I remember when I first heard the line "retirement equals death"

"Desconstruindo Harry", alà (C)m de ser original ao extremo, à (C) tambà (C)m a prova de que Woody Allen tem como grande inspiração e influência o cinema de Bergman, onde certas cenas possuem referências claras ao maravilhoso "Morangos Silvestres".

It's very funny, & sometimes deep, as expected of Woody Allen.

Woody Allen gives us a dark comedy about a writer named Harry Block and it's about how his life is a complete mess because of how unfaithful he is to woman and how crude he is to other people. In this movie Harry Block tells a bunch of short stories that he wrote and each of them are little bits of his life in each short story. Woody Allen plays the lead character Harry and Woody Allen also wrote and direct this very interesting Comedy. I gotta say every time when Harry tells a story in this movie and they show all these famous actors in each story and they all like represent him in some way, I find that just brilliant I think this movie was very clever and actually pretty damn funny at times. Woody Allen chose a very good cast as well to star in his movie because celebrities like Kirstie Alley, Billy Crystal, Robin Williams, Judy Davis, Tobey Maguire, Demi Moore, Elizabeth Shue, Stanley Tucci and Julia Louis-Dreyfus did a very good job in this movie. I still don't think this movie is better than Mighty Aphrodite or Midnight In Paris but I do still think this movie is very good and it's still worth a look. But I gotta say this movie is for people who like Woody Allen's movies, so if you don't like his movies than you probably wouldn't care for this one. But I for one liked this movie it was a good Comedy with great performances and with a great meaning behind it, this movie is a one of a kind.