THE CURSE OF THE JADE SCORPION

At last, a Woody Allen movie that offers a plausible explanation as to why younger babes are attracted to the character played by the now 65-year-old leading man. In The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Allen plays a seedy 1940s insurance investigator who has little to recommend him, but that’s why slumming heiress Charlize Theron takes a shine to him: she knows her dating him would scandalize her family. As for Helen Hunt, who plays a brisk efviciency expert at the insurance company who would like nothing better than to see Allen’s character fired, her attraction to him is the result of a post-hypnotic suggestion.

ýllen the writer/director is not above using such creaky devices; he also throws in a string of jewel thefts, yet another curvy ingenue (Elizabeth Berkley, whose nubile secretary at least knows better than to get involved with Allen’s character), and an explosion in a fireworks factory. Still, Scorpion can be awfully entertaining if you put yourself under hypnosis and forget that you’ve ever seen a Woody Allen movie — hell, any movie — before.

The film is strictly Allen lite, so it makes a fitting companion piece to last year’s caper, Small Time Crooks. Unlike Allen comedies of yore, these movies have no deeper philosophical agenda than simply to make viewers laugh for 90 minutes. Scorpion is full of venomously sharp one-liners delivered with crack timing, particularly in the bitter bickering between Allen and Hunt. It features good supporting work by Dan Aykroyd, Wallace Shawn, and David Ogden Stiers, and it has a fine, weathered-antique look, thanks to Zhao Fei, the Chinese cinematographer who’s shot Allen’s last three movies. Of course, when a critic is reduced to praising a film’s supporting cast and its cinematography, you can bet that there’s little of substance to chew on. But then, Allen’s a summer filmmaker now, so I guess one can’t blame him for making popcorn entertainment. At Falmouth, the Maine Mall, Brunswick, and Newington.

— Gary Susman