Celebrity review

As Irene Cara - labouring under the double tragedy of pink leg warmers and a large 80s perm - would have it, fame goes hand-in-hand with a desire for aviation and offers the added bonus of eternal life.

Whether achieving celebrity actually does bring any degree of immortality or not is one of the questions driving diminutive, bespectacled and highly rated writer-director Woody Allen's latest offering. And it's an examination made all the more pointed in the current climate of pretty people burning brightly and fading fast in the media spotlight, especially when you consider Allen's own fame has little to do with looks or obvious sex appeal.

Moving like an aging and rather desperate moth, entertainment journo Lee Simon (Kenneth Branagh) bins wife Robin (Judy Davis) in a minor, mid-life-crisis panic, and begins circling a series of beautiful and significantly younger women.

Variously successful encounters with movie star Nicole Oliver (Melanie Griffith), a supermodel (Charlize Theron), intelligent book editor Bonnie (Famke Janssen) and wayward actress Nola (Winona Ryder) follow, but none seem to supply the fulfilment he craves. And unable to buckle down to either novel or screenplay, Simon's pursuit of personal fame remains as elusive as ever.

Robin, meanwhile, is drifting in a suddenly aimless existence until a chance meeting with TV exec Tony Gardella (Joe Mantegna) begins to turn everything around. Despite her initial suspicions of a man so pleasant, charming and deep-down honest, Robin soon finds a relationship developing alongside a completely unexpected career in television, and ironically garnering a level of celebrity her ex-husband has always sought.

And around these two central strands, of course, are the barbed one-liners, minute observations and wicked caricatures with which Allen traditionally dresses his satirical slant on society. There's no role for the director this time, although Branagh has been lured into so grotesque a Woody impersonation, you almost feel (and certainly wish) that Allen himself was on screen. If only so that Branagh would shut up.

We know that Kenny is capable of much better, so this must surely have been an error of judgement on the part of either actor or director or both, but sadly it clouds what otherwise could have been an enjoyable and quite keenly perceptive film.

Mantegna and Davis work well together, and there are strong smaller turns from Bebe Neuwirth, the ever impressive Janssen and even Leonardo DiCaprio, playing his movie brat image to tabloid extreme, exchanging wild tantrums with girlfriend Vicky (Gretchen Mol), inhaling sherbet and trashing hotel rooms.

Stuff to savour as always from Allen, but you'll only get something out of this dual quest for emotional fulfilment and public adulation if you can overlook Branagh's manically distracting central performance.