The sure period touch of Bullets Over Broadway and The Purple Rose Of Cairo deserts Woody Allen in this featherlight caper, a silly crime yarn with a plot that would struggle to fill a New York Stories segment. The Woodster plays a veteran insurance investigator facing competition at work from Helen Hunt's no-nonsense efficiency expert. His problems swell when a stage magician (David Ogden Stiers) uses his hypnosis skills to turn him into a nocturnal jewel thief.
Visibly frail in a part two decades too young for him, Allen looks ill at ease in one of his increasingly rare leading roles. But it's as a writer that he's most exposed, his nebbish wisecracks failing to paper a thin script. Hunt, meanwhile, struggles to bring her trademark warmth to a part that's a virtual embodiment of Woody's fear of self-possessed women.
DVD Extras:
Trailer.
