Scoop (2006)

Focus Features presents a Woody Allen film, starring Scarlett Johansson and Hugh Jackman. Written by Allen. 96 minutes. Rated PG-13 for some sexual content.

3 stars

Every time I mention Woody Allen to my mother, she grimaces like she’s just been unwillingly force-fed a lemon. We then engage in this bad shtick, in which she shakes every skeleton in the director’s metaphorical closet and I defend him vociferously from the misguided attacks.

“No, mom, Soon-Yi is not his daughter,” I’d tell her, as if she hadn’t heard this same explanation a dozen times before. “And Mia and Woody were never married.”

Although she consistently garbled the facts, I understood my mother’s apprehension: Life had mirrored art too closely. Allen had pigeonholed himself for decades as a charming neurotic, which audiences considered to be a genuine reflection of his real-life persona. When Allen began his courtship of Soon-Yi Previn, who was 35 years his junior, it cast aspersions over his fictional character, who was also routinely dipping into another decade’s dating pool. Audiences now considered Allen – both real and imagined – as a lecher, who cast nubile starlets so he could prey upon their naivety.

For those who abandoned Allen over his tumultuous off-screen dalliances, consider “Scoop” to be the director’s olive branch.

I believe audiences responded favorably to “Match Point,” Allen’s last film, because the director opted not to cast himself as a lead character. It certainly wasn’t the first Allen film to be sans Woody, but it was the first film in which his kvetching persona wasn’t at least represented (actors as diverse in talent as Kenneth Branagh and Will Ferrell have been tolerable stand-ins).

When Allen returned to the front of the camera in “Scoop,” – to stand aside the bewitching Scarlett Johansson – I could clearly see my mother’s face in my mind’s eye. I could hear the nay-sayers too: This is Allen’s rampant narcissism again realized, casting himself as the suitor for someone nearly a half-century younger.

I’ve spent most of my life as an Allen apologist, so I’m sympathetic to the notion that he, in the words of another cherished comedian, gets no respect. In “Scoop,” he is not Johansson’s object of affection, but her surrogate father of sorts.

She’s Sondra Pransky, an aspiring journalist with the inquisitiveness of Nancy Drew and nerdy charms of Velma Dinkley on summer sabbatical in London. He’s Splendini (nee Sid Waterman), a Brooklyn magician making ends meet with children’s matinees overseas.

During a stint as an apprehensive participant in a trick closet gag, Sondra encounters the spirit of gonzo journalist Joe Strombel (Ian McShane), who received a hot tip about the true identity of the Tarot Card Killer while on deck a circuitous boat to purgatory.

He surmises that the serial killer, who has vexed authorities for weeks, is actually wealthy playboy Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman), who descends from a line of famed English lords.

Sondra has never excelled at any form of journalism that didn’t involve sleeping with her source, so her plan is to woo the aristocrat while she snoops around his apartment looking for damning evidence.

Audiences could forgive Lord Lyman for looking twice at Sandra, despite her terrible choice in eye apparel. They may, however, have a hard time believing that he falls for such an inelegant American.

For fans of Allen, it may not seem so implausible. This is the director’s 37th feature film, so it’s not surprising that “Scoop” incorporates some of his better plots and characters. Sondra is cut from the same character cloth as May, the ditzy sister from “Small Time Crooks” who woos an unlikely millionaire with her off-beat sensibility. (Some critics may counter that Johansson, because of her scattershot performance, is actually playing the traditional Allen character. Frankly, I don’t see it.)

And who could forget Diane Keaton’s nutty theories about her next door neighbor’s murderous tendencies in “Manhattan Murder Mystery”? She wasn’t a detective, just a pedestrian New Yorker with an overactive imagination.

Critics tend to categorize Allen’s films into two groups: major achievements like “Manhattan” and “Annie Hall,” and minor trifles like “Anything Else” and “Hollywood Ending.”

Thankfully, the director has never subjugated himself to the whims of our expectations. After winning Best Picture for “Annie Hall,” he made “Interiors,” a chamber piece that evoked the style of Ingmar Bergman.

Although I don’t always enjoy the end result, I appreciate that Allen didn’t try to capitalize off the success of “Match Point,” his first well-reviewed film in almost a decade, by duplicating its tone and style.

“Scoop” isn’t as focused as “Match Point,” nor as riveting. But it has a lot of laughs, and Allen keeps some of the best for his character. In order to temper suspicions, Sondra and Sid adopt assumed names when infiltrating the Lyman estate. Sid can pretend to be Mr. Spence, oil baron and occasional real estate tycoon, all he’d like, but all he really knows how to be is a yokel from Brooklyn. We’re amused, therefore, by his choice of dinner party repartee. When the topic turns to religion, he tells the distinguished group that he was born into “the Hebrew persuasion, but I converted to narcissism.”

No Woody Allen film is going to feel absent of the director’s influence. But at 70, Allen can look in a mirror and know for certain he can’t be the character he was in 1966. He’s transitioning – both in the real and imaginary realms – from paramour to parent.

“Scoop” is a reflection of that evolution; for example, he resists foisting his persona on Jackman so that he can conquer Johansson by proxy. In essence, he’s stripped the film of all the elements that have made audiences increasingly uncomfortable over the years.

I think it’s time to call my mother.