Stardust Memories - 1980 - 3½ Stars

Actors:  Woody Allen, Charlotte Rampling
Director:  Woody Allen

Stardust Memories is the kind of film that picks you up and shakes you by the lapels (and assumes you are wearing lapels).  It's Woody Allen screaming 'Can't you see?!  Don't you get it?'  And yes - this film principally exists as an apologia for his turn away from outright farce into more dramatic territory.  It's hard not to read authorial intent into this film, but it also seems to think that Allen's turn into dramatic territory is also funny, just on a cosmic level rather than a Three Stooges level.  His apartment having a blown up picture of the famous picture of a man being shot in Vietnam is just as funny to me as having a famous Marx Brothers scene.  Stardust Memories also pounds us over the head with its examination of fame's downside - indeed, we see it conferring almost no advantages on Allen's character, as even his chaffeured Rolls Royce becomes a burden. This would make a solid double feature piece with The King of Comedy, but then again, just about anything would.