"I take notes all the time when ideas hit me," Woody Allen told TimeOut in a 2012 interview, "and I throw them in a drawer. So I have a drawerful of ideas and I could probably make a lot more films."
Well, the idea for this film might have been better left in that drawer. A comedy devoid of wit, a murder-mystery thriller neither thrilling nor mysterious, it has pretensions to some sort of philosophical heft but it's as shallow as a puddle, a CliffsNotes pastiche of Kant and Kierkegaard that makes for a pale imitation of the masterly Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Phoenix plays Abe Lucas, a famous philosopher whose appointment to a small-town university excites the staff and students, though it's hard to see why, as he's a paunchy, red-eyed alcoholic depressive in the grip of an existential crisis. "I'm bullshit," he tells star-struck student Jill Pollard (Stone) and, given the slouching, sullen style of his lectures and his pouting self-centredness, it's hard to disagree.
When he overhears a diner a conversation involving a woman beset by legal troubles he realises he can solve her problem - anonymously and perfectly - by knocking off the source.
