It’s funny how a movie that starts with such an extraordinarily mundane, realistic view of New York City, not to mention such a depressing view of the human condition, ends up in a total fantasy – everybody happy, everybody fulfilled, and everybody together on that most depressing night of all, New Year’s Eve. But that’s not nearly as funny as the exchanges between Larry David, playing the jaded Woody Allen character, and Evan Rachel Wood, playing the dumb blonde cheerleader from Louisiana. I can’t remember a first half-hour of a movie that I’ve enjoyed so much, or jokes that had me laughing out loud a day later. In the process of having things work out to the perfect ending we spectate Woody’s wet dream that redneck, gun-toting, Bible-waving Southerners are not just dumb but are actually repressed swingers and homosexuals, which gives the movie a feel-good final act but wipes out any possible heft it might otherwise possess. Which makes it sort of like the early Woody Allen films, which is not at all bad.

As a collection of gags, it had its high points and low points, and the best high points were pretty low, as well.  Most of the art, if it can be so called, devolved from the mixing of the different personality types. In its favor, you didn’t have to wonder how these three, or four if you count the missing groom, could have been best buds, because one was only there as the bride’s brother. Of course, you did wonder how he could have been that bride’s brother. Oh, well. And as is often the case, the setup, latent with novelty and expectations, was five times better than the movie’s second half, when the ridiculous had to be explained and resolved.

A rich farrago of witty repartee, courtesy, I suppose, of Noel Coward’s original script. The American living by her wits, and considerable beauty, plopped in the middle of the decaying English aristocracy is, by now, a well-worn, time-honored conceit, but nonetheless open to japes and gibes, the latter most expertly delivered by Kristin Scott Thomas. Jessica Biel and someone named Ben Barnes played the short-term romantic couple – she, the veteran of love; he, the naïve romantic – but it was Colin Firth lurking in the background who, we always suspected, would steal the show. Unless, that is, one counts the proper but tippling butler – a symbol, perhaps? – who gets the last, and best, line.

Much – nay, most – of the fun in this movie came from a recognition of who the characters would become on the TV series of 40 years ago. If it sounds like I’ve got my verb tense confused, it’s only some time travel I borrowed from the film, specifically Leonard Nimoy’s Spock. The story was no better than a TV episode, and the special effects were probably sensational in IMAX, which I tried, but failed, to see. On the downside, there were Indiana Jones-like scenes that were embarrassingly out-of-place – e.g., Kirk running from a deranged dinosaur on an ice planet patently incapable of supporting such a life form. Credit to the actors, even Eric Bana as the villain, for not trying to do too much.

Ho-hum. This would’ve been a better series of newspaper columns than it was a movie; and as with all “based-on-a-true-stories,” you wondered what touches a screenwriter starting ab initio would’ve bothered including. The religious fundamentalism of the first cellist? The parlous state of the newspaper? The involvement of the L.A. mayor? None of these added much to the story; nor did the filming on location in Cleveland. Robert Downey Jr. did a credible job – much better than Tropic Thunder, for sure – but Jamie Foxx was too much a tour de force for my taste. As I said, ho-hum.