He who despises himself, Nietzsche says somewhere, nonetheless esteems the despiser within himself. Woody's soliloquies (and Annie Hall teems with them) address that despiser, trying to charm, appease, and outflank him. He treats the audience the same way, as if to anticipate its presumptive contempt for him. Why does he expect contempt? Because, apparently, he is a man of humble origins…. Sometimes he kids his anxiety by making Alvy paranoiacally touchy about antisemitism, and sometimes he indulges it by making Annie's family really antisemitic. Either way, Annie Hall expresses his own self-absorption: you never know whether you are seeing reality à clef, or Allen's perception of reality, or his perception of his perception of reality. But the jokes are funny even when it's not clear who their butt is. He traps you inside his quirky consciousness and unscrupulously tickles you to death. (p. 622)
Annie Hall is frequently funny; but not integrally funny. The slight story of a vapid affair is heavily festooned with mots and gags that run on without adding up; after a while they seem ad hoc, defensive, timid, merely tactical self-depreciations even when Woody is trying to lure us, as Alvy lures Annie, into his language-field. (pp. 622-23)
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