Woody Allen directed Scoop, which is his attempt at magical realism meets murder mystery meets comedy of manners. Scoop’s premise is that a famous journalist gets a big scoop on the identity of a famous London serial killer, but can’t work on the story because he is on a boat on the River Styx steered by Death. He briefly escapes, but his only options are a ditzy student journalist played by Scarlett Johansson and a magician played by Woody Allen. The suspect is a handsome, well-known British aristocrat played by world famous Australian Hugh Jackman.
Scoop is widely considered one of Woody Allen’s worst films, but because I saw it a few days after Collateral Beauty, I actually thought his stab at magical realism was clever albeit broad and one of his least cynical, most optimistic films. There are a few things to remember about Allen while watching Scoop. First, one of Allen’s finest movies is Crimes and Misdemeanors, a film about getting away with murder, prospering and living in a world without justice or God. In contrast, Scoop is a movie where people break the supernatural rules of the universe just to bring a murderer to justice. Scoop uses an invisible father to open doors that normally would be closed to the two lower to middle class ethnic Americans so they can solve the case.
Second, Allen will use other actors to play an Allen like character in his films. In Scoop, there are two Allens: Allen and Johansson. Allen enjoys the subversive nature of scrappy, intrepid people who don’t fit in some how finding a way into heretofore restricted areas and somehow flourishing. Unlike Match Point, which had none of Allen’s characteristic trademarks, Scoop is almost an aggressive reprise where he reasserts his identity and demands a happy ending. In a sense, he has Johansson solve her own murder. Allen apparently does have a conscience and seems to feel guilt over his past cinematic actions.
Third, if human nature can be base, Allen seems to suggest that human nature can also be reassuringly predictable and defining. Allen’s character is a hack magician who always praises people, but he also has some inexplicable supernatural gifts when he correctly predicts his own demise, unknowingly correctly guesses Johansson’s fictional family business and correctly distrusts the seemingly perfect murder suspect. Johansson’s character may not be born to be a journalist, but she is a strong swimmer, which seems to be a necessary trait for the journalists featured in Scoop. People are destined to do certain things on a spiritual level, but in the real world, the actual execution is approximate, not accurate. Allen’s magical realism is adjacent to M. Night Shylaman’s heroic world. Nothing ever happens how we imagine that it should, but it works out nevertheless.
Scoop is far from a perfect movie. It begins with off screen consensually ambiguous intercourse, which I interpreted as rape played for laughs, but I can’t be disappointed in someone that I already resolved never to spend money on his films. It defies all logic that you would sleep with someone if you thought he was a serial killer at the beginning of the relationship even if that man was Jackman. Scoop is more of a trifle than a source of aggravation. Anthony Stewart Head makes a brief appearance at the end of Scoop. If you are an Allen fan, you will either love it or hate it. Murder mystery fans should definitely give it a chance.