I suppose now that ScarJo has aged out of being Woody Allen’s muse, Emma Stone is his inspiration. Emma Stone is eternally affable and a joy to behold, but I really watched Irrational Man for Parker Posey, whom I have loved for decades. Hurrah, she finally made it! Except she didn’t because Irrational Man felt like a low-key mashup of some of Allen’s greatest hits (Crimes and Misdemeanors, Match Point, Vicky Cristina Barcelona) without being great or a hit.
Irrational Man is once again a world that only exists in an Allen film. An academic institution gives a position to an openly drunken philosophy professor who no longer writes. All the girls and women find him irresistible, but even binge-drinking teens find him inappropriate. Though he is more put together than his turn in I’m Still Here and The Master, Joaquin Phoenix plays the professor who has lost his zest for life. Did he try visiting Spain and hooking up with Javier Bardem because I hear that helps? After all, more guys seem to swoon over philosophy professors than women. He finds another solution that his friend/potential love interest, played by Stone, suspects.
Irrational Man doesn’t work because it doesn’t feel rooted in the real world. Throughout Irrational Man, people treat tragedy as stories to trade over meals or cocktails, but are largely untouched by the real world, which is why they are fascinated by Phoenix’s character, who has theoretically travelled the world and experienced tragedy first hand. (As a philosophy professor? Who does he think that he is, Sean Penn?). Then when Irrational Man tries to have these talkers not doers get sullied by the real world, and there are consequences, they don’t feel real, but more like punch lines. Irrational Man feels like a forgettable theoretical exercise. You can skip it