The Purple Rose Of Cairo

1985 Woody Allen, Allen not himself in it, letting Jeff Daniels mess aroud with Mia Farrow this time.
Incidentally, we think we prefer Keaton to Farrow. Less whiny. Though Farrow is still a decent actress. Allen again has the b-jokes firing on all cylinders, which is always a decent ways of passing 90 minutes, The premise is a good one and smartly executed. We get somke nice absurdist juxtapositions. Also, the evocation of the Depression era, if slightly rammer down your throat, is interesting and leads to some good sets of fairgrounds, bars, music shops and apartments.
The plot, for some reason after being rather cuddly, decides to give you a slap across the face at the end. This may have something to do with Allen's dislike of actors and the film industry, or he may have been attempting to do something different. It is certainly traumatic.
The rest of the film is pretty much the defintion of 'good enough', which is faint praise but praise all the same. Again, not Allen's best, but 90 minutes that could have been spent in a much worse manner.