Until Irrational Man, the new Woody Allen thriller/comedy about a philosophy professor who discovers he needs to murder a stranger in order to feel more completely alive, I'd never especially cottoned to the actor Joaquin Phoenix. Lacking the life-altering beauty of his late brother River, Joaquin appeared to be the emotional equivalent of a clenched fist, a seemingly reluctant performer, not naturally drawn to the sometimes awkward exposure of the camera that is part of the brutal bargain leading to film-world stardom.
In Irrational Man, Phoenix becomes the latest of Woody's late-maturing philosopher heroes, in this case a man stuck unhappily in the philosophy department of a small New England liberal arts college. As with most of Woody's reluctant boys-into-men, Abe Lucas is more hung up about his inadequacies in the bedroom than in the classroom.
"I haven't been able to perform in a year. I can't write, I can't breathe!" This confession to a student (Emma Stone) leads Abe to a desperate act that hearkens to that cranky old 19th-century Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky. This very Woody version of a Dostoyevskian madman is pitched in precisely the way most likely to appeal to the director's loyal fans, while predictably infuriating Woody-haters.
Abe is by no means the finest of Woody's existential everyman. He lacks the brooding intensity of Martin Landau's family physician who gets away with the murder of his female lover through sheer chutzpah (Crimes and Misdemeanors), the incendiary good looks and sexual charisma of Jonathan Rhys Meyers' homicidal tennis pro (Match Point), and the high spirits and annihilating self-absorption of Cate Blanchett's downwardly mobile divorcee (Blue Jasmine). Abe is at best an idiot savant in the high-stakes game of murder as a means of personal growth. It doesn't require a spoiler alert to tip you off to the fact that this guy is going to fall and fall hard for his crimes. The pleasure of Irrational Man comes in experiencing that unraveling with all the obligatory pratfalls. Since we're on campus, it's appropriate to declare that this Woody passes muster with at best a gentlemanly "C" grade.
Woody does once more come through for his female performers, with memorable licks provided by Emma Stone and Parker Posey as the women in Abe's life. Also, the handsome young British actor Jamie Blakely is quite fetching as a young student essentially cock-blocked by Abe's hoarding all the eligible women on campus.
The years have taken their toll on Woody along with his still vigorous fan-base. Since the train wreck of his breakup with former muse/lover Mia Farrow, Woody has been forced to shop each new script around to the ever-growing ranks of this new century's new faces. Some of the results have been Oscar-caliber brilliance. Others, like Phoenix, merely get the job done. As with 1995's vastly superior Mighty Aphrodite, this is a Woody comedy where the creator feels the need to use a chorus of voices to clue us into aspects of Abe's character either underwritten or underwhelming as performed.
Cheer up, Woody lovers, help is on the way. Next year's entry will feature the awesome young comic performer Jesse Eisenberg. Eisenberg seemed very much at home in his first outing as the young man with double female trouble in 2012's To Rome with Love. This is an artistic marriage that one could feel coming ever since the Queens, NY-born performer's breakout turn as a Woody-worthy nervous kid in Noam Baumbach's family gem The Squid and the Whale .