Venice Film Festival: She’s Funny that Way - movie review: 'Peter Bogdanovich's first film since 2001 is an absolute riot'

Imogen Poots is a hoot as Hollywood veteran Peter Bogdanovich delights with a screwball masterpiece
Riot: Imogen Poots and Owen Wilson in She's Funny That Way
David Sexton29 August 2014

Almost everything about this boded ill. Peter Bogdanovich, now 75, has never recaptured the success of The Last Picture Show, which he made at the age of 32. He’s been made bankrupt twice. He hasn’t made a feature since The Cat’s Meow of 2001.

Moreover he wrote this film, previously touted under the offputting title Squirrel to the Nuts, with his much younger, former wife Louise Stratten, whom he began dating following the murder of her 20-year-old sister, the Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten, with whom Bogdanovich had also been in a relationship. And the film is that old story yet again: a Broadway producer falls for a golden-girl prostitute and turns her into a star...

But it’s an absolute riot, a triumph, a retro screwball comedy that easily matches the classics of the genre. Imogen Poots, glorious, despite the kind of New York accent your friends might manage, plays Izzy, a callgirl given $30,000 by bighearted mogul Owen Wilson after their night together to allow her to follow her dreams as an actress. Next day she turns up to audition for his new play, starring his wife (Kathryn Hahn) and his dirty-dog pal Seth (Rhys Ifans) — and the preposterous entanglements that follow are concocted with fantastic ingenuity.

Glorious: Imogen Poots as Izzy in She’s Funny That Way

It’s so fast, so snappy, it bowls you over and you never quite recover your balance. There’s a bravura scene set in an Italian restaurant where almost everybody present is caught up in the plot though they’ve yet to discover it...

As an angry, rude therapist treating several of them, Jennifer Aniston is a hoot too. “Now, I’m not judgmental but that’s stupid,” she tells her clients.

But the star of this movie is 25-year-old Londoner Imogen Poots, she of the big mouth and the droop snoot — she’s winning enough to stand up the whole film with its dodgy premise.

So this is an astoundingly old-fashioned movie? What better use could Bogdanovich have made of his cineaste leanings, so late in the day? The Sala Grande at Venice rocked with laughter.

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