Clips and trailers aren't always the best items to judge a movie by. I remember seeing the trailer of "The Graduate" back in the 60s and thinking it looked terrible. I can't remember why I went to see it anyway--but I'm glad I did.

Woody Allen has brought Andrew Dice Clay back from the Dead. Apparently both are good, too.

As far as I know, Woody always picks his own actors. He used to see me at Elaine's, but he never gave me a role.

Never saw SotL. Never liked Jodie one bit in any of the movies I saw her in, including Taxi Driver just like Billy.

Does Blue Jasmine contain a well-delivered, ambiguous character portrait by Cate Blanchett? Yes. Does it have moments of both mild and laugh-out-loud comedy? Yes. Is it a good movie? No. It's a disorganized mess of elements that go so poorly together that moments when I'm sure Allen meant for us to feel the anguish and despair of Blanchett's character brought forth bursts of laughter from the audience, who just didn't know how to read the scene.

There's a lot of Interiors here with the anguish of the WASP rich (even a similar breakdown-when-confronting-a-husband-who's-walking-out-on-the-marriage). It's odd how much Allen seems to want to will himself into a cultural group that he is not only so isolated from, but which he generally mocks if he uses them at all in his comedies. At least the portrait of this woman feels accurate, and not the stereotype laden cliches seen on t.v. But how are we supposed to care about the woes of a member of the 1% and why does Allen? There could be good answers for both questions, but the movie doesn't suggest any.

Sally Hawkins is, I guess, good as Blanchett's low-class sister. But the stereotyped personality and material she's given is embarrassingly cliched, very much in a t.v. tradition of working class gals (she even seems to have a New York accent, which is odd for a California girl). And while it's easy to see how finances or luck (even before the disaster Hawkins and ex-husband Andrew Dice Clay went through) can force sisters into separate worlds, in what world ever could these two people have been raised by the same parents, had the same educational opportunities or in any way be connected to the same world? There's some nonsense about the parents always preferring Blanchett, but that doesn't explain how even in her early twenties she was polished, poised and well-spoken, while Hawkins seems to have been raised at the hair-and-nails salon run by the sister on Ugly Betty. The attempt to make us believe these two people could have been raised in the same house is just ludicrous.

There are all sorts of motifs from earlier Wood Allen movies. The descent into madness from Stardust Memories. The "working class slobs" from Small Time Crooks. The shattered fragile WASP identity from Interiors. The creepy "seducer" from Crimes and Misdemeanors. The big bad rich philandering husband from Alice. The toxic relationships from Husbands and Wives. But they don't gel. Ideas that independently might have worked (like Blanchett's painful life, her not always likable but basically understandable behavior) are mashed up with ideas that will never never work (like Allen's weird take on Hawkin's life and friends, and her two kids who are like an alien observer's attempt to reproduce what it has seen of the human species via telescope). And what exactly is meant to be funny and what is not is completely unresolved. Not "ambiguous" or "complex, like in life" just unformed and not hashed out thoughtfully.

At best you've got the pathos and black comedy of Blanchett's painful deterioration, but what we're supposed to get from this and why Allen wants to explore it is never explained. What was he going for? What did he want us to gain from it?