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His alter ego here is Jerry Falk (Biggs), a struggling young comedy writer. And we soon understand why he's struggling: He's far too loyal to his hopelessly inept agent (DeVito). His mentor is a bitter old writer (Allen) who constantly gives him advice about his professional and personal life. And his personal life takes a turn for the worse when he falls in love with an unstable nutcase (Ricci) whose even more batty mother (Channing) moves in with them.

Peppered with extremely well-written observational humour, the script is quite entertaining as it plays with the idea of writing and artistic creation. But the plot itself is mildly annoying and seriously dull, with only a few sparks of actual humour. Biggs is good but bland in the central role; we identify with him, but he seems far too hapless to ever make anything of himself. Ricci plays the comic femme fatale nicely, but the character is deeply unsympathetic, and you never want her to end up with Jerry. (She's so infuriatingly obnoxious that she'd put any man off women for life!) Meanwhile, Allen is very funny as the seasoned cynic trying to find a grain of hope somewhere; he's droll and sharp and not remotely annoying (probably because he doesn't have a young woman throwing herself at him). But as a director, he does nothing notable here besides allowing Darius Khondji to photograph Manhattan beautifully. The snappy dialog and fluffy jazz score only remind us of what Allen's capable of as a filmmaker. Sadly, this one just doesn't have enough humour or insight to make it remotely memorable. It's like anything else, really.