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It is almost a compulsion that I watch nearly every Woody Allen film, in the off chance that, despite his insidious personal background, it’s a home run. In this case, it was undoubtedly the most painfully slow and dreary WA film I’ve encountered. I figured I couldn’t go wrong with a cast like that - Elle Fanning, Selena Gomez, Timothy Chalamet, Jude Law, and on and on. But in a way, this felt like a forced attempt to try to Allen-ify a film with a modern cast in a modern era. The “romanticizing the past” elements of the protagonist felt forced, like the figurative clothes were wearing him. Elle seemed to dim down her authenticity into a very unbelievable character (likely at Allen’s hand, as we know he loves a damsel or a brilliant-but-doesn’t-know-it type). The lonely white rich kid trope is tired, and the lines that Timothy spoke were straight out of an old Allen movie romanticizing the same things and the same city. Selena can do no wrong, so she admittedly carried the movie for me. She seemed to be the only one without rose-colored glasses and a sense of imposter syndrome or naïveté. But as for the rest? Painfully slow, boring, and like a regurgitation of Allen’s best work from the past. And as always, better writing than directing - the characters are always a bit too theatrical to be believable, sharing their monologues aloud, squinting a little too hard when they’re meant to be “thinking.” Sincerely, my harshest (and only) metacritic critique to date.