Scoop

I was surprised by how charming I found this story to be
Frankly, for me Woody Allen had become as pleasure long past his sell by date. However, I happened to catch this movie when flipping around and watched the rest of it and then caught the whole film at a later viewing. I liked it! No, it isn't a great film, but it is a delightful light entertainment.

Scarlett Johansson plays Sondra Pransky, a young, somewhat ditzy but earnest reporter for her college newspaper. She is in London visiting a wealth upper crust friend and staying with her family. We also learn that she has (as Woody Allen's character notes later) a problem with promiscuity. For example, when trying to get an interview with a big time movie producer who has no intention of telling her anything, all she comes away with is a hangover and an embarrassing story of being outwitted.

We also get to see a barge load of souls headed to the land of the departed engaging in the kind of idle conversation you might expect from the newly dead. A secretary...
One of the best comedies of the year.
Sondra Prensky (Scarlett Johansson), a college journalist, encounters big-time journalist Joe Strombel's (Ian McShane) spirit. He proceeds to giving her information that could mean the biggest scoop of his life, pertaining to aristocrat Peter Lyman(Hugh Jackman) and the Tarot Card murders. With his advice, and the help of magician Sid Waterman (Woody Allen), she starts the investigation against Peter, but (predictably) falls in love with him. Is he the Tarot-card killer? Is she in any mortal danger?

I've always been a huge fan of Woody Allen, even though he's been in a little bit of a slump lately which he seems to have gotten out of since Match Point, so this might be biased.
This does resemble some of his earlier work, such as Manhattan Murder Mystery, so it might not seem very original. But they were done so long ago that putting a modern spin to his genre works.

With that in mind, I absolutely LOVED Scoop. I'd say it was one of the best adult, smart,...
A very entertaining, very funny, and very fun film
Woody Allen seemed to be losing it at the start of the twenty-first century. The films he released around that time (THE CURSE OF THE JADE SCORPION, SMALL TIME CROOKS, etc.) failed to make a lasting (or for that matter positive) impression on audiences. In 2004 he enjoyed something of a comeback with MELINDA AND MELINDA before bursting back on the scene with his thrilling masterwork MATCH POINT. Now he's back to whip up another slice of cinema greatness, and this is a slice considerably sweeter than (though not as classy as) MATCH POINT. This is SCOOP, one of the most delightful romantic comedies of the year.

SCOOP revolves around Sondra Pransky (Scarlett Johansson), an American college student eyeing a career in journalism. While vacationing in England with a friend, she visits a magic show run by the timid Sid Waterman (Woody Allen). Sid decides to use Sondra in a magic trick involving a box from which Sondra will supposedly disappear. Instead of disappearing,...
Click to Editorial Reviews