Anything Else (2003)
Film Overview
A young New York comedy writer finds himself trapped between an unpredictable girlfriend, an overbearing manager and the increasingly alarming advice of an older schoolteacher who thinks civilisation may be approaching disaster.
Jason Biggs plays Jerry Falk, a young writer attempting to build a career while maintaining a relationship with Amanda, played by Christina Ricci.
Jerry loves Amanda despite the fact that their relationship has become a constant source of confusion. She is emotionally unpredictable, their sex life has deteriorated and her mother Paula moves into their apartment with little regard for Jerry’s opinion.
Woody Allen plays David Dobel, an older comedy writer and teacher whom Jerry meets professionally. Dobel quickly becomes mentor, adviser and increasingly strange philosophical influence.
Danny DeVito plays Jerry’s longtime manager Harvey Wexler, whose inability to advance Jerry’s career is matched by his extraordinary determination to remain part of it. Jimmy Fallon appears as Bob, one of the people complicating Amanda’s already complicated romantic history.
Darius Khondji photographs Manhattan in widescreen, while Central Park, Greenwich Village, Queens and Brooklyn provide the geography for a story about a young man who spends most of the film allowing other people to decide what his life should become.
Watch Anything Else
My Review
Learning when to stop taking everyone’s advice
Anything Else is built around a familiar Allen character placed in a younger body: Jerry Falk is intelligent, anxious, romantic and extraordinarily bad at ending situations that are obviously making him unhappy.
Jason Biggs plays Jerry with enough softness to make his passivity believable. He is not incapable of seeing what is wrong. He can describe the problems with Amanda, Harvey and his career perfectly well. What he cannot do is translate recognition into action.
Jerry stays because leaving somebody feels more frightening than remaining unhappy with them. Every relationship therefore continues long after the point at which a less anxious person might have made a decision.
That makes Dobel’s arrival both useful and dangerous. For perhaps the first time, somebody is telling Jerry that indecision is itself a decision.
Jerry understands every problem in his life except the possibility that he is allowed to walk away from it.
Christina Ricci’s Amanda is difficult in ways that make the relationship genuinely exhausting. She loves Jerry, or at least frequently believes she does, while behaving as though almost every promise made to him remains open for renegotiation.
Jerry is permanently trying to determine whether the latest problem is serious enough to justify leaving. Amanda’s volatility means the emotional evidence changes before he can finish the calculation.
Ricci gives her enough charm that Jerry’s attachment never feels completely inexplicable. The problem is precisely that the good periods still exist. Relationships are much easier to end when every memory has become unpleasant.
Amanda ensures just enough hope survives to keep Jerry inside the cycle.
Amanda does not have to make Jerry happy all the time. She only has to make him happy often enough that leaving always seems slightly premature.
Woody Allen’s Dobel is far more interesting than a straightforward wise mentor. Some of his advice is exactly what Jerry needs to hear. Some of it is paranoid enough to suggest Jerry should probably keep a safe distance from the source.
Dobel worries about anti-Semitism, social collapse, survival and the possibility that ordinary life may become dangerous with almost no warning. His solution is preparation: weapons, supplies and a refusal to assume civilisation will behave sensibly merely because it did yesterday.
The joke is that this visibly anxious man may still be the most decisive person Jerry knows. Dobel can be wrong about almost everything and still recognise that Jerry needs to take responsibility for his own choices.
Mentorship becomes less about copying Dobel’s worldview than borrowing enough of his nerve to make a decision.
Dobel is not necessarily the man Jerry should become. He is the man who finally teaches Jerry that becoming someone requires making a choice.
Danny DeVito’s Harvey provides the professional version of Jerry’s romantic problem. Harvey may be affectionate, loyal and completely sincere about their relationship, but Jerry’s career has outgrown what the manager can provide.
Again, Jerry knows this. He stays because firing Harvey feels cruel. The film keeps returning to the cost of confusing kindness with permanent obligation.
Jerry’s inability to disappoint anybody means he slowly constructs a life in which almost everybody disappoints him.
That is a strong comic idea because Jerry’s decency becomes one of the reasons he remains miserable.
The Manhattan setting is especially comfortable. Central Park becomes the place where Jerry and Dobel hold their long conversations, almost turning the park bench into a classroom.
Greenwich Village, Commerce Street, Astoria and Sheepshead Bay expand the city beyond the polished Manhattan apartments. Darius Khondji’s widescreen photography gives the film a look slightly different from the more traditionally framed Allen comedies surrounding it.
The city feels relaxed even when the characters do not. That contrast works well for Jerry, who is constantly experiencing private crisis while the rest of New York continues without showing much concern.
Central Park in particular becomes the place where huge philosophical questions are discussed while joggers and pedestrians simply continue past them.
Jerry and Dobel discuss the collapse of civilisation in Central Park while New York carries on around them with irritating confidence.
The soundtrack is one of the film’s strongest pleasures. Billie Holiday with Teddy Wilson, Diana Krall, Wes Montgomery, Lester Young and Teddy Wilson alone give the film an unusually rich collection of jazz voices.
Easy to Love is an ideal song for a story in which loving somebody turns out to be considerably easier than living with them. The Way You Look Tonight brings another recurring Allen favourite into Jerry’s New York.
Diana Krall’s It Could Happen to You has a title almost perfectly suited to Dobel’s philosophy. According to him, almost anything could happen, which is precisely why Jerry should stop assuming tomorrow will conveniently solve today.
The jazz creates elegance around characters who rarely behave elegantly themselves.
The ending finally requires Jerry to do the thing the entire film has delayed. He has to leave. Not simply Amanda, not simply Harvey, but the version of himself organised around waiting for everybody else to become easier.
The possibility of work in California provides the external reason, but the important change is internal. Jerry chooses movement over another round of explanation.
Dobel’s own conclusion is much stranger, reinforcing the fact that Jerry’s mentor was never intended as a model of perfect psychological health. Jerry can use the advice without adopting the adviser.
That feels like the right ending for Anything Else. Growing up is not discovering the person who knows all the answers. It is realising nobody else can make the important decisions for you indefinitely.
Jerry’s breakthrough is not learning the answer. It is accepting that the answer finally has to be his.
Cast and Characters
Jason Biggs
A young comedy writer whose romantic and professional lives are dominated by his inability to make difficult decisions.
Christina Ricci
Jerry’s unpredictable girlfriend, whose affection and instability keep their relationship in a permanent state of uncertainty.
Woody Allen
An older teacher and comedy writer whose useful advice is mixed with increasingly alarming theories about life and survival.
Danny DeVito
Jerry’s loyal but ineffective manager, whom Jerry cannot bring himself to leave despite knowing the professional relationship no longer works.
Stockard Channing
Amanda’s mother, whose arrival in the apartment gives Jerry even less control over his domestic life.
Jimmy Fallon
A figure from Amanda’s romantic orbit whose presence adds another layer to Jerry’s already considerable insecurity.
Billie Holiday gives Jerry’s complicated romance effortless grace
Holiday, Teddy Wilson, Diana Krall, Lester Young and Wes Montgomery create one of the film’s most satisfying musical elements.
Easy to Love
Billie Holiday performs Porter’s song with Teddy Wilson and His Orchestra. The title fits Jerry and Amanda almost too neatly: love is not the part of their relationship causing the trouble.
Old standards around a very modern relationship
Diana Krall, Wes Montgomery, Lester Young and Teddy Wilson join Holiday across the soundtrack.
Stockard Channing also performs There’ll Be Another Spring, bringing music directly into the story.
The Way You Look Tonight
Billie Holiday and Teddy Wilson perform one of the standards most closely associated with Allen’s musical world.
It Could Happen to You
The title sounds almost like Dobel’s entire philosophy compressed into a song.
I Can’t Get Started
A wonderfully appropriate standard for a protagonist who spends most of the film unable to begin changing his life.
Honeysuckle Rose
Wilson’s performance adds another classic jazz voice to the film’s relaxed Manhattan soundtrack.
Locations
Anything Else stays firmly in New York, with Central Park functioning almost like Jerry and Dobel’s outdoor consulting room.
Central Park
Jerry and Dobel repeatedly meet in the park for conversations about relationships, careers and the possible collapse of civilisation.
50 Commerce Street
The historic Village street provides one of the film’s real Manhattan residential locations.
Astoria
Astoria appears during the memorable confrontation over a parking space.
Sheepshead Bay
Filming also moved into Brooklyn, broadening the film’s geography beyond Jerry’s Manhattan routine.
Jerry’s Apartment
The increasingly crowded domestic space becomes a visual measure of how little control Jerry has over his own life.
The Dobel Classroom
The park bench effectively becomes a recurring classroom where Jerry is taught that action may matter more than another hour of analysis.
Awards and Recognition
Opening Film
Anything Else opened the 60th Venice International Film Festival in 2003.
Out of Competition
The film screened outside the main competition.
Darius Khondji
The acclaimed cinematographer gives the film a widescreen visual character unusual within Allen’s New York comedies of the period.
Christina Ricci
Ricci gives Amanda enough attraction and unpredictability to make Jerry’s inability to leave her both comic and understandable.
Woody Allen as Dobel
By moving his familiar anxious persona into the mentor role, Allen allows a younger protagonist to occupy the romantic centre of the film.
A Younger Allen Protagonist
Jason Biggs’s Jerry acts as a generational variation on the neurotic New York characters Allen himself had played for decades.