After several years abroad Woody Allen returns to his own backyard, New York City, for his latest comedy Whatever Works. Typically Allen, Whatever Works is about a Jewish curmudgeon that may be a little too self-aware for his own good. “I'm a profound and sensitive soul with an enormous grasp of the human condition,” retired, Nobel Prize worthy quantum physicist Boris Yellnikoff says about himself. What he really means is that he’ll rant and rave till the cows home (that’s a cliché), waxing poetic and not so poetic about the stupidity of people he sees on the street, or the kids he tutors in chess. "People make life so much worse than it has to be and believe me, it's a nightmare without their help." Big words from a man with chronic panic attacks and sings the chorus of the Happy Birthday song twice when he washes his hands.

Like many times before in Allen’s movies, out hero is shaken out of his typical malaise with the arrival a peculiar stranger, in this case it’s the young, runaway southern belle Ms. Melodie St. Ann Celestine (Evan Rachel Wood). On the streets, having run away from home, she latches on to Boris for a night’s room and board and eventually ends up his wife despite their differences in age, interests, background, intellect and a laundry list of other things. True, this could just be more of Allen’s wishful thinking (or in his case, wish fulfillment), but Whatever Works plays to broad farce, so unless you’re a terrible stick in the mud, you go with it. At the very least Wood throws herself into the part, playing the most over-the-top southern whirlwind since Blanche Dubois.

Later we catch up with Melodie’s parents, Marietta (Patricia Clarkson) and John (Ed Begley Jr.) subjects of an old fashioned southern drama ending in infidelity, destitution and divorce. If Melodie seems like a caricature it’s nothing as compared to her mom and dad. Marietta sweeps in like Scarlett from Gone with the Wind, all tales of misery and woe, fire and brimstone. She comes into town, not just finding her daughter, but finding her married in a just above roach-motel status apartment with a man old enough to be her father. It offends her delicate southern religious conservative sensibilities, and so Marietta tries to steer Melodie towards an actor (Henry Cavill) closer to her own age. Naturally though, Marietta is a closeted bohemian with a successful photography career in the offing and the open-mindedness to have two male lovers at the same time.

Meanwhile, John has all the bluster of a TV evangelist, which can only mean one thing: he’s a closeted gay man and it’s a fact only revealed in that Mecca of gayness, New York City. Could you see this turn coming from a mile away? You better believe it, and a rather simplistic message it is that all it takes for ignorant conservative tight asses to get their head on more progressive is to see a few of the sights in New York. Come on, Woody, you’re smarter than that. Or perhaps the filmmaker, like his crotchety alter ego as immortalized by Larry David, Allen doesn’t realize that he’s off the reservation. Feeling superior is one thing, but going around with the tact of a five-alarm fire is something different. Fortunately, as portrayed by David, Boris is likeable despite his prickly demeanour, if only because he’s venting a lot of the frustration some of us feel in the face of the modern world.

It’s not Allen’s best, but the title speaks for itself. “[W]hatever love you can get and give, whatever happiness you can filtch or provide, every temporary measure of grace -- whatever works!” In a world where people get so uptight over how other people live, it’s a good message, but again that’s kind of where the autobiographical pall enters back into the picture. There’s a conflicting style at times, the old Hollywoodness of Boris’ breaking of the fourth wall combined with the post-modern reaction of passers by to Boris seemingly talking to himself. Outside of that ridiculously staged bit of farce, Whatever Works works well enough to provide laughs and oddballs to keep you enjoyed and Allen still knows how to write a line like no one else. “Don't kid yourself,” adds Boris, “it is by no means up to your human ingenuity, a bigger part of your existence is luck.” So too it seems is a decent modern comedy.