Woody Allen expands his repertoire with this funny, minimalistic TV mini-series, the first in his career (though he has done TV specials, and even a TV movie, before). The series deals with some heavy topics - particularly apolitical detachment versus radical activism - but mostly it's a pretext for Woody to fire off one-liners, some of them obvious, some of them laugh-out-loud funny ("you're gonna fly to Cuba in a two-seat plane? Her, the pilot, where are you gonna be, strapped on the wing? Now go sleep on the idea and if you insist in the morning we'll discuss a lobotomy"). He and Elaine May are wonderful together (as they were in 2000's "Small Time Crooks"); expectedly slower with age, but mentally as sharp as ever. Miley Cyrus does well cast against type, but the real discovery here is Rachel Brosnahan - enormously appealing (right after filming this, she started winning one award after the other for the "Marvelous Mrs. Maisel"). The final episode may or may not be Woody's homage to "A Night At The Opera", but the actual finale is too low-key even for this no-frills series; the funniest episode is the 5th, with the briefcase/telephone booth sequence being the highlight of the entire series: Woody looks and sounds so much like the Woody of "Bananas" there, as if the booth had been Doctor Who's time machine. 7/10 on the whole (8/10 for episode 5).
Review of Crisis in Six Scenes
