When Woody Allen goes bad, he really goes bad.

Blue Jasmine is not a comedy. I think Woody Allen is trying to make some kind of social statement. But what kind of social statement is he making? The poor people are portrayed as ugly, boorish oafs, foul in every way. The rich people are portrayed as amoral and insensitive, but glamorous, well-dressed, attractive individuals. The sympathy of the audience is definitely directed toward the rich people, including the Bernie Madoff type played by Alec Baldwin. The characters are uniformly uninteresting, the dialog simultaneously grating and boring, and I don’t know how Woody Allen managed to do it, but he somehow made San Francisco look ugly, which has to be a first. His usual score of crappy old music is even more irritating than usual.

The moral of Blue Jasmine is: if you’re poor, you’re trash; if you’re rich, try to stay rich. This movie has a black heart. Save your money. Save your soul. Don’t go see Blue Jasmine.