Rating: 
Summary: Just Too Marvelous For Words...But I'll Try
Review: A married couple strolls into a Manhattan apartment and announces--to another married couple--that they've decided to split up for a trial run--just to see what it would be like to be single again...An obvious dramatic conceit? Watch and see...This is a superb Woody Allen drama from the early 90s, and it's kind of like Alvy and Annie fifteen years later--had they made it to begin with. We all know, even before the black screen with the 1940s jazz soundtrack appears, that Allen's characters are dissatisfied, whimpering, anxiety-ridden Manhattanites who think they deserve better--in love and in life--and therein lies the genesis of each character's dissoluteness and [im] or [a] morality. That's a key question for the student of Woody Allen's films: do we have the right to think we deserve better? See what the characters have to say about it. Judy Davis turns in a marvelously comedic and dramatic performance--worthy of the Oscar! I'm not a Sydney Pollack fan--he's icky--but as Judy Davis's husband, he turns in a great performance as a dissatisfied husband who wants a little more out of life--something other than being married to a cold-in-bed, cerebral Simone-de-Beauvoir type brilliantly played by Davis. They're an explosive couple who ultimately realize the meaning of marriage--even if they can't pinpoint it exactly in every context. Mia Farrow does a good job in this film--for once she acts--maybe the realness of her real-life situation (remember the scandal? )with her adopted daughter brought out real emotions that were captured on-screen. If you're interested, read Farrow's biography ("Things Fall Away"--available from amazon.com), and she'll pinpoint for you the scenes she acted in after her knowledge of the Woody/SoonYi affair. Allen in this film is Allen--a writing professor who has a slight thing for Juliette Lewis, a New York debutante/student-of-Allen's on the eve of her 21st birthday--her name is Rain and she's named after Rilke--what do you think is the significance of that? She brings out the stormy and tempestuous side of love--but, as Lewis's character says to Allen, "Well...I'm worth it." The only disappointing casting in this film is Allen's casting of the horse-faced, lumpy and dumpy obvious-as-a-limmerick Liam Neeson who ends up with Farrow in the end. They deserve each other. This film will certainly make you rethink marriage--heterosexual marriage anyway. But then again, maybe you got that from watching mom and dad...get this video instead. At least these characters are given witty dialogue and know the importance of opera and theatre--so if love fails, at least there's that...
Rating: 
Summary: Convincing and compelling.
Review: Allen's best film of the 1990s was headline making on first release (1992) because of the real life controversy it mirrored. Today it stands out as a superbly crafted film documenting the brittle relationships of angst ridden New Yorkers. Allen and Farrow achieve their regular high acting standard but the best acting comes from Judy Davis and Sydney Pollack as their best friends. Allen's gift of being simultaneously imaginative and realistic is exhibited here. The dialogue is razor sharp, the social observations insightful and the hand-held camerawork appropriate at displaying the fraught lives which are examined.
Rating:
Summary: BUT OF COURSE!
Review: But of course this is a great film. It's very rare that Woody Allen has a dud. When I went looking for it I was really surprised to find it in the DRAMA section and after watching it I was even more suprised. Of course like every movie it had it's dramatical elements, but for the most part I felt it took everything pretty light....(even funnier I always thought Woody Allen's MANHATTAN should of been considered a Drama).......Anyhow the film is about two couples, who now after years of being married, start considering separating from their mates. It's a must see. It gives a real honest look into the minds and emotions of aging couples.
Rating: 
Summary: WOODY IMITATES HIMSELF
Review: Handheld camera, documentary style, 1st person confessionals - all style and techniques Woody Allen has used before with success. After all the whiz-bang massive Hollywood movies Allen can sometimes be remarkably fresh - to me, he's always been the Film Students best friend, low budget, dialog driven...accessible to anyone with a camera and knack for writing. However, this movie's insider pseudo New Yorker intelligence really grates. Allen goes out of his way to tie all analogies to relatively obscure references to show just how cosmopolitan and educated they all are. To me they all come off as a bunch of whining elitist snobs with no real problems at all. They are annoying and unlikable in every sense. I have enjoyed Allen's films immensely, but this one seems like a good Woody Allen imitation, and not the real thing.
Rating:
Summary: WOODY IMITATES HIMSELF
Review: Handheld camera, documentary style, 1st person confessionals - all style and techniques Woody Allen has used before with success. After all the whiz-bang massive Hollywood movies Allen can sometimes be remarkably fresh - to me, he's always been the Film Students best friend, low budget, dialog driven...accessible to anyone with a camera and knack for writing. However, this movie's insider pseudo New Yorker intelligence really grates. Allen goes out of his way to tie all analogies to relatively obscure references to show just how cosmopolitan and educated they all are. To me they all come off as a bunch of whining elitist snobs with no real problems at all. They are annoying and unlikable in every sense. I have enjoyed Allen's films immensely, but this one seems like a good Woody Allen imitation, and not the real thing.
Rating:
Summary: Woody puts the "Fun" in dysFUNctional
Review: He's not happy with her, their friends aren't happy with each other, the friends break up, he flinging with his aerobics instructor, she, trying to indulge in an editor, while everybody self-consciously tells the viewers what they will not tell their (ex-)spouses. We see manipulation posing as truth, vulnerable facades imitating intimacy, lust mimicking passion, and discover, in the end, that perhaps the only true desire in a Woody Allen movie is to dodge happiness & to take pleasure in the misery of knowing that it probably wouldn't have worked out anyhow. Confused yet? I can't imagine anybody still in the "honeymoon" stage of a First Great Love appreciating this movie. For those scarred by years of relationship campaigning, much of Allen's view may ring all-too-true. I won't say how many times I saw myself, my wife, and ex-lovers plastered against the screen. Throughout the movie, individuals and couples long for intimacy, for lasting passion, for refreshment, but end up settling for comfort, manipulation, and denial. I wanted to scream. I hoped, hopelessly, for hope--this is, after all, a Woody Allen Movie--but was left, in the end, with Gabriel (literally "God's Hero") telling viewers that love, romance, and passion can only exist as a neurotic and fleeting figment of experience. Damned if I'm willing to settle for that. And perhaps that's the great strength of this movie. It could, after all, be a satire, not about mid-life-crisis-men seeking youth through young lovers, but showing, in the crassest relief, how barriers and little deceits ultimately lead to destruction and misery in relationships. And maybe that's where the hope lies, in learning to be honest in a way that none of Allen's characters can be, not even with themselves. (If you'd like to discuss this review or DVD in more depths, please click the "about me" link above and drop me an email. Thanks!)
Rating:
Summary: In Love and War
Review: HUSBANDS AND WIVES is Woody Allen's point that nothing is fair about love gone sour as a seasoned mariage breaks apart. You'll find everything funny about a middle-aged, Syd Pollack's hausting affair with a exhuberant young new love. You'll chuckle to death at Judy Davis ex-wife's scheme to find fresh passion as a Single. While the funny stuff is going on, Allen's marriage hits the skids. Well, what the heck? It wouldn't be a Woody Allen film for Woody Allen fans without a few expected laughs over his hopeless struggles.
Rating:
Summary: A Woody Allen gem.
Review: Husbands and Wives traces the trials and tribulations of two couples as they come to grips with marriage, separation, dating and reconciliation. This film is similar to previous Woody Allen efforts, with its emphasis on witty dialogue, New York locales and character driven story. The film delves into the varied reasons for marriage as well as the reasons for separation. As the couples break up and reform, we see that they don't know very much about marriage and they (like us) just have to muddle through as best as they can. You may find that you don't like the characters very much; they are the sort of people that one finds on any city street -- torn with doubts, not very happy but not very sad, they are "the average human" trying to make his or her way in an often bewildering world. My quibble with the film was the amount of hand held camera; while appropriate to the story, I found myself reaching for Dramamine on more than one occasion.
Rating:
Summary: Woody's Masterpiece.
Review: I have been a major Woody Allen fanatic since I was 10 years old, but only now, after my third viewing of "Husbands and Wives" did I fully comprehend the importance of this film within his oeuvre. It's home movie feel and documentary style provide subtle integrity for its frames. The acting and the characterization are superb. This may be the best cast he ever assembled with producer, and non-actor, Sydney Pollack even putting forth a remarkable performance. The audience will care about all of the players and wonder exactly what will happen in the end.
Allen denied repeatedly that "Husbands and Wives" was autobiographical but it would be impossible for it not to have been given the events of his life. Here we see him play a writer who, just like Allen, is cherished by fans for his "funnier early works." One wonders whether his affair with Soon-Yi had begun at the time of its production and what exactly his interactions with Farrow were like.
Allen was clearly working through many of his own personal dilemmas and that is exactly why the film is so authentic and believable. It will touch in some way most who see it as sometimes life really does imitate art.
Rating: 
Summary: I'm sorry, but...
Review: I really love Woody Allen. I haven't seen all of his films or anything, but "Annie Hall" and "Sleeper" are among my top ten favorite movies of all time. I think the seventies was his best decade. The eighties also proved productive, but the nineties, middle of the road. He definetly had his moments ("Everyone Says I Love You" and "Sweet and Lowdown") but he also had some stinkers ("Deconstructing Harry" and "Celebrity"). I decided to see this movie based on good reviews and my almost unwavering love of Woody Allen. I watched it the whole way through, waiting for it to get good, but I'm sad to say, it never did. I found the characters to be annoying and the continual strife between the characters was not pleasent to watch and got old after a while. I don't even think it was that effective. Woody was as always, excellent, and Juliette Lewis and Mia Farrow pulled their weight, but I thought Judy Davis, an actress I'm not to fond of anyway, was miscast. I also did not care to much for Liam Neeson's and Sydney Pollack's performance. Not a movie I would recommend to a 70's Allen fan, but if you liked "Deconstructing Harry"... See "Interiors" or "September" instead.
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