Whatever Works: Critic Reviews

100%

MovieWeb: 3 reviews

50%

Rotten Tomatoes: 161 reviews

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Lisa Schwarzbaum Entertainment Weekly (Top Critic)

42

The fact that Allen wrote the script in the '70s explains something about why his newest movie feels so old.
Full Review » 4 years ago
A.O. Scott New York Times (Top Critic)

40

My problem with Whatever Works is not that the premise is a wee bit familiar. Rather, it's that the delivery is off.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Catherine Shoard Guardian [UK] (Top Critic)

60

It won't win Allen new converts, but for those of faith, it offers consolation.
Full Review » 3 years ago
Claudia Puig USA Today (Top Critic)

50

One would think Allen had worked though his on-screen fascination with the older man-young girl scenario by now. This latest exploration just feels derivative and musty.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Ann Hornaday Washington Post (Top Critic)

This toxic, contemptuous, unforgivably unfunny bagatelle finds Allen at his most misanthropically one-note.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Ty Burr Boston Globe (Top Critic)

50

Whatever Works would have only worked if its director had written his trademark self-caricature out of it.
Full Review » 4 years ago
J. Hoberman Village Voice (Top Critic)

Whatever Works illustrates, even as it names, Allen's artistic limitations.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Joe Neumaier New York Daily News (Top Critic)

40

It's good to have Allen return to the city he grew up in. Can the grown-up Woody come back now, please?
Full Review » 4 years ago
Tom Maurstad Dallas Morning News (Top Critic)

40

The dialogue is forced and stagey, the actions as predictable as they are improbable and the insights little more than dusty cliches.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Lisa Kennedy Denver Post (Top Critic)

63

After the fiercely enjoyable Vicky Christina Barcelona, this return to New York City is a letdown, though not without a few charms.
Full Review » 4 years ago
David Edelstein New York Magazine (Top Critic)

In small doses, [David] turns the narcissistic jerk into a hipster. But as an actor he has no equipment for suggesting a conflicted inner life: It's all just straight to the camera, uninflected bombast.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Anthony Lane New Yorker (Top Critic)

This is pretty broad stuff, but Clarkson is so much more vital and amiable than anyone else that you instantly root for her.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times (Top Critic)

75

Larry David is the mind of the enterprise, and Evan Rachel Wood is the heart.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Michael Phillips Chicago Tribune (Top Critic)

38

Coming off last year's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the freshest Allen film in more than a decade, Whatever Works plays like a hoary old Broadway stage comedy yanked, reluctantly, into the present.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Robert Abele Chicago Tribune (Top Critic)

38

Coming off last year's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the freshest Allen film in more than a decade, Whatever Works plays like a hoary old Broadway stage comedy yanked, reluctantly, into the present.
Full Review » 4 years ago
J. R. Jones Chicago Reader (Top Critic)

It never registers as more than a writer's conceit.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Steven Rea Philadelphia Inquirer (Top Critic)

75

Allen and David do stuff in Whatever Works that shouldn't work but does.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Colin Covert Minneapolis Star Tribune (Top Critic)

75

Whatever Works isn't topnotch Woody Allen, but it's still immensely funny.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Tom Long Detroit News (Top Critic)

59

The result is a witty, well-played work without an adequate center. If you can get past that, Whatever Works does.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Rex Reed New York Observer (Top Critic)

Whatever Works is a dubious idea at best, but when nothing works, it's time to throw out the script and move on to omething that does.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Ronnie Scheib Variety (Top Critic)

Though stuffed with witty one-liners and wondrously convoluted tirades, this far-fetched, deliberately artificial game of musical chairs...feels forced, often losing itself in excess verbiage.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Lou Lumenick New York Post (Top Critic)

50

The Woodman's return to New York after a four-year European sojourn finds him working very familiar territory much less fruitfully than in the past.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Roger Moore Orlando Sentinel (Top Critic)

60

Whatever Works isn't deep, but with Grandpa Woody, you accept the warmed over, the recycled, just relieved he hasn't made a spectacle of himself.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Peter Howell Toronto Star (Top Critic)

63

We've seen this kind of May-December setup in many Allen movies, but this one follows a less predictable path and with more amusing secondary characters.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Joe Baltake Passionate Moviegoer (Top Critic)

Woody's latest shrewdly upends the filmmaker's own comic pessimisms
Full Review » 4 years ago