Annie Hall

Last night I watched Annie Hall, and I LOVED it.  

All the things that sometimes bug me about Woody Allen -- his nervous skittishness, his self-absorption, etc. -- were there. But they weren't as overwhelming and they seemed less like a superficial form of shtick and more like a genuine, sincere, conflicted and struggling sensibility that I was capable of sympathizing with.

Annie Hall is a love story. It starts out with Allen's character trying to figure out what went wrong with his relationship with the quirky Annie, and the movie is a set of flashbacks that explore his childhood and other relationships while telling the story of how he they met, how they connected, and how their problems emerged.  There were a lot of cute devices, like people stepping out of the fourth wall and talking to the camera, etc, which I found effective and charming.

The last lines of the film were really poignant. After running into Annie at some point after their relationship has ended, he reflects: 

It was great seeing Annie again and I realized what a terrific person she was and how much fun it was just knowing her and I thought of that old joke, you know, the, this, this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, 'Doc, uh, my brother's crazy, he thinks he's a chicken,' and uh, the doctor says, 'well why don't you turn him in?' And the guy says, 'I would, but I need the eggs.' Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships. You know, they're totally irrational and crazy and absurd and, but uh, I guess we keep going through it...because...most of us need the eggs.