“Annie Hall” is a culturally-defining movie from the 1970s from one of the most critically acclaimed modern directors, Woody Allen. Despite its cultural significance, however, there isn’t much to love in 2007 in the heavily drug-laden, sexually obsessed ‘romantic’ comedy.

Woody Allen is as benign a Hollywood figure as one can be to Generation-Y in 2007. Disconnected from the height of his popularity in the 1970s by 30 years, he is unlikely to hold as much appeal to Gen-Y as other Hollywood directors from the 1970s. These range from directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, whose works such as “The Godfather” heavily influence current-day successes such as “The Sopranos,” or Steven Spielberg, who is still making mega-blockbusters to this day. There was “Match Point” in 2006, a critical success as well as a financial success, making $23 million, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com. Other than that, Allen was a non-figure to the group of college students attending a screening of his signature work, “Annie Hall,” in one of the Cole Hall auditoriums at Northern Illinois University.

The film stars Allen, who plays a psychoanalytical, hyper-critical comedian named Alvy Singer, and Diane Keaton, who plays the titular character. The film follows the story of Alvy and Annie’s hot-and-cold romantic relationship, shown through a combination of real-time scenes, flashbacks, and dream sequences.

Singer meets Annie – a flighty, hippie Wisconsin transplant living in New York City – through a friend. The two make an instant connection and soon start dating. The fractures in the relationship are revealed quickly when Alvy begins demanding more from Annie in the relationship than she wants to offer. In a revealing scene, she admits to Alvy that she cannot sleep with him without the aid of marijuana.

They eventually break up. Then get back together. Then they break up again. And so forth.

All the while, Alvy is constantly narrating the film’s story. Allen chooses to break the fourth wall in the film – the divide between the audience and the film – when the Singer character addresses the audience directly. Other unconventional story techniques in the film include fantasy sequences, scenes where characters’ voices and faces are transposed on Disney characters, and subtitles appearing during dialogue that reveal what characters in a scene are actually thinking.

The film was nominated for five Academy Awards in 1977 and won four, including best picture. The cultural differences between the film’s 1977 setting and today are very minimal. There are no moments of era-related shocks to be found in the form of disco, mustaches or clothing, though it is highly unrealistic to believe that Hall’s expansive New York City apartment only costs $800 a month – until the audience realizes it has to factor in inflation.

The dialogue in the movie is its strongest characteristic, and largely a reason why the film reached the success it did. The character of Alvy is a comedian, and accordingly, the character is extremely quick-witted and hilarious.

But sometimes an actor can cross the line between cute self-effacement and self-referential mockery.

The character of Alvy, as revealed in the film’s narration, is obsessive compulsive about issues regarding his masculinity, his sexual prowess, relationships, and social class. These are usually appropriate character flaws for a comedian to have, but in a movie about a comedian when these make up the majority of the film’s situations and dialogue, it all just comes off as whiny. Diane Keaton’s Annie is, however, an absolute pleasure. The character is a flighty, twee character who uses phrases such as “la-dee-da” throughout much of the film, but she is also a self-confident, feminist role model. She doesn’t let her relationship with Alvy define her, choosing to allow her own personal goals and integrity be the things that make her who she is. Plus, there’s a reason why this character created so many fashion trends in the 1970s: Somebody in the movie’s make-up department must have known what cultural phenomenon they were creating when they put Annie in a layered button-up and tie outfit. If only Alvy wasn’t such a sexually aggressive, emotionally abusive boyfriend to Annie – and the seven other people he comes on to, wildly inappropriately, in the film – the movie would have merit as a work of female empowerment.

The film’s bluntness in regard to issues of relationships, sexuality, drugs and New York City life must have been a breath of fresh air in the 1970s. But for this audience in 2007, that breath of fresh air smells more like New Jersey.

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