A Rainy Day in New York review round-up: Woody Allen's film seems to be 'born of profound creative exhaustion'

Woody Allen’s latest film,  A Rainy Day in New York , which has been put on ice in the US over decades-old sex abuse allegations against the director, is finally seeing the light of day. The first set of reviews have also started to trickle in for the same. [caption id=“attachment_7255301” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  A Rainy Day in New York. Image from Twitter[/caption] Starring Timothee Chalamet, Elle Fanning, Selena Gomez, and Jude Law, Allen’s 50th feature film has already released in Poland, and will open in multiple European, South American, and Asian countries throughout fall. It will be the opening film at the Deauville American Film Festival, set to take place on 6 September, before theatrically releasing in France on 18 September. Check out some of the critics’ reviews for the film James Marsh of  South China Morning Post states that the worldview of A Rainy Day in New York comes across as “fabricated and anachronistic”. He writes, “The filmmaker’s failure to understand 21st-century youth is painfully evident. He appears to have looked no further than The Catcher in the Rye or MAD Magazine to get a handle on how young people behave, and the results are excruciatingly stilted and phony.” Variety's Jessica Kiang shares a similar sentiment. “Despite featuring some of the best actors of their respective generations, A Rainy Day in New York feels like a film born of profound creative exhaustion. It is a retread of territory Allen has extensively covered before, but while the same can be said about almost all of his late-career work, seldom have the gears ground quite so loudly, and never before has the writing felt this chronically out-of-phase with the era it depicts,” Kiang states. Screen Daily’s Lisa Nesselson, however, believes that while the film is definitely not a masterpiece, it deserves to be watched in the theatres on the 70 mm screen. “Allen’s specialty isn’t realism and neither is it keeping up with the times, and it’s difficult to insist that he gets with the programme and makes different movies than the ones he pretty much invented. Hit or miss, Allen’s a storyteller, and this outing is far more hit than miss,” Nesselson emphasises. While maintaining that some of the scenes in the film are “cringeworthy”, The Hollywood Reporter writes what saves the film is Chalamet’s terrific acting. “A Rainy Day has its moments, most of them thanks to star Timothée Chalamet (Call Me by Your Name), who does a terrific job channeling your typical Allenian antihero: a neurotic, scrawny, clever and critical New Yorker who’s also quite the charmer_,”_ the publication states.