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West Coast Woody Allen?


I don't know why anyone would call Albert Brooks a West Coast Woody Allen. Unlike Woody Allen, Albert Brooks' movies are clever, well written, funny and highly entertaining.

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He is not as prolific as Allen!

Its that man again!!

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I agree to a point. Woody Allen's films pre-1980 were all-time greats. But since 1980, Albert Brooks films have been far better. I think Albert Brooks was the most underrated comedic mind of his time.

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Albert Brooks is my favourite comedian but that's a bizarre statement. Brooks's first movie is made in 1979 so the comparison is strange to begin with. And while Albert Brooks has only directed six movies since 1980 compared to Allen's thirty-three, I do ultimately find it difficult to believe that you could in anyway consider those six movies as a whole better than Zelig, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Radio Days, Crimes and Misdemeanors, and Husbands and Wives. Those movies alone would account for Allen's reputation as one of the most important filmmakers of all time.

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You are right, my post is overly simplistic. From a pure comedic point of view, Woody Allen's pre 1980 films were much funnier (at least to my taste) than anything after 1980, although "Zelig" was pretty funny. Films like "Take the Money and Run", "Bananas", "Love and Death", "Sleeper", "Annie Hall", etc rank as some of the greatest comedies ever and represent Woody Allen's golden age. "Sleeper", "Bananas" and "Love and Death" top my list. They come off as slap-stick, yet they all have much deeper insights into intellectual topics of the day. "Sleeper", was a parody of a dystopic future world. "Love and Death" was a parody of Tolstoy. That's the brilliance of his 70s films, they could entertain such a broad audience.

Many of the post 1980 stuff goes off into artsy tangents, and just aren't very entertaining or funny. The stuff post 2000 is just garbage (just my opinion). These films entertained an increasingly smaller audience.

You are correct in pointing out that Woody Allen is far more prolific than Albert Brooks as a film maker. I never understood why Albert Brooks never made more films. As for comparing the two, I'll leave it at this, "Lost in America", "Real Life" and "Defending Your Life" were all much funnier than anything Woody Allen did post 1980. "Real Life" is one of the little known comedic masterpieces of the past 40 years, IMO.

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Ah! I agree with just about everything you have said there except I will say that I do find Allen's post-80s output to be quite entertaining even if they are not as funny as his earlier films and have a lot of "artsy tangents" as you say. But I agree that for out-and-out laughs, Brooks definitely made the funniest movies around. I agree too that Allen's stuff after Sweet and Lowdown has been generally mediocre.

The fact that Albert Brooks has to work so hard to get funding for his movies is one of the great cinematic tragedies of our time.

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