'Scoop' lacks suspense and, worse, humor

There are two kinds of Woody Allen fans. There are those who believe he has made profound comic statements of the human condition in his movies and root for him to do so again. And then there are those who simply want him to be funny.

Both groups are likely to be disappointed by his latest release, Scoop, an unpersuasive, empty and, worst of all, woefully unfunny trifle from a writer-director who continues to tarnish his reputation as a filmmaker.

Focus Features 'Scoop' C- The verdict: Allen looks as tired as his jokes sound, in this trivial comedy about sleuthing out a serial killer. Director: Woody Allen Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Hugh Jackman, Ian McShane, Woody Allen, Kevin McNally Run time: 96 minutes Release date: July 28, 2006 Rating: PG-13 for some sexual content. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'Scoop'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Long gone are the days of Allen's comic nods to Anton Chekhov (Hannah and Her Sisters), Fyodor Dostoyevski (Crimes and Misdemeanors) or William Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy), as well as those movies that drew, sometimes savagely, from his personal life, like Stardust Memories, Husbands and Wives or Deconstructing Harry.

In their place are trivial, only intermittently amusing, shaggy dog tales that have been his preoccupation for most of the past decade, minor, forgettable efforts such as Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Hollywood Ending or Melinda and Melinda. That list is now one movie longer with the arrival of Scoop, a lightweight tale of a London serial killer and the team of an amateur journalist and a third-rate music hall magician on his trail.

Although the film feels like it is built of stale parts of other Allen movies, it begins with promise, thanks to its only moments of originality. It opens with the funeral of much-eulogized hot shot crime reporter Joe Strobel (Ian McShane of TV's Deadwood). Then the film cuts to the newly deceased scribe crossing the River Styx, being rowed to his resting place. On the boat, he meets a victim of the so-called "Tarot Card Killer." Learning the murderer's identity, Strobel swims back to the Land of the Living to find someone to write the story.

For some reason — probably Allen's script — he chooses student journalist Sondra Pransky (Scarlett Johansson, who still looks fetching in nerdy glasses and a cheap wardrobe). Strobel appears to her in the "Dematerializer" chamber of cheesy magician Splendini, aka Sid Waterman of Brooklyn (Allen, of course), which she had just entered as a volunteer for Waterman's big stage illusion.

Strobel fingers aristocratic Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman) and, for no logical reason, Sondra enlists Waterman's help in tracking down the clues that will expose the upper-class playboy.

As he showed in his most recent film, Match Point, which was hardly top-drawer Allen but seems so next to Scoop, he has little interest in or talent for the mystery genre. The action revolves around a music room in Lyman's country home with a combination lock and his lack of imagination in hiding incriminating evidence. In addition, if Allen wanted to build suspense about the killer's identity, he might have given us more than one suspect.

Johansson returns from her dramatic turn in Match Point, but someone should tell her it is time to go when you fall into Allen's verbal cadences, as she does here. Jackman is aptly debonair, though that's about all he is called on to be. And Allen is all bluster and show biz bombast as Waterman, presumably a close relative of David Ogden Stiers' hypnotist in Jade Scorpion.

Scoop makes one wonder how long the tired-looking Allen can keep churning out these films and why he bothers. He made some great movies in his career, but they were all a long time ago.