Woody Allen's movies have been so disorganized as to defy description and so hilarious as to merit them. The link between his free-associational wit and his casual manner of presentation has not been adventitious, as Play It Again, Sam, his extended excursion into nostalgia, conclusively demonstrates. Although Allen again stars in his own scenario, in leaving the directing to Herbert Ross he has chosen the wrong man at the wrong timing. Ross cannot capture Allen's humor. He can only contain it…. In Play It Again, Sam Allen has returned to gag writing. He has transferred rather than translated his play to the screen. The one-liners are integrated into a coherent story, but it suffers by comparison with the previous films, which became mired in non sequiturs whose very randomness evinced a certain fatalism…. With each successive film Allen has insisted upon specifying the ramifications of sexual frustration at the expense of developing his initial theme of social inadequacy. By doing so, he inevitably turns from contemplation of society to self, thus widening his appeal … while limiting his scope. Allen has not lost his comic vision, but he has blurred it perceptibly. The character he has created always was numbered among the walking wounded. In Play It Again, Sam the injuries seem to be self-inflicted. Of course, they remain incurable…. [To] survive is an accomplishment. To comprehend is an impossibility. It is this inarticulated assumption which provides the manic intensity that animates Allen's work and the resignation that informs it. His ever improbable sense of the ludicrous rescues him from the occupational hazard of repetitiveness, but his interest in a laugh a minute precludes raising his horizons noticeably beyond the next punch line. Within these bounds Allen's efforts can be no different than they have been. They cannot be any funnier than they already are. (pp. 57-8)
Robert G. Michels, "Short Notices: 'Play It Again, Sam'," in Film Quarterly (copyright 1972 by The Regents of the University of California; reprinted by permission of the University of California Press), Vol. XXVI, No. 2, Winter, 1972–73, pp. 57-8.
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