Vicky Cristina Barcelona Review

Bottom-Line:  The movie is wholly predictable while reveling nothing new, fun, exciting, or engaging about the human heart.       

Written and directed by Woody Allen, Vicki Cristina Barcelona chronicles the love lives and dalliances of two American woman, Vicki (Rebecca Hall), and Christina (Scarlett Johansson) who are on summer vacation in Barcelona Spain. 

As I stated at the outset of this review Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a bore.  There is no ground here that has not been covered before; there are no new, or earth shattering messages to read.  Most of the characters are one-dimensional and as such not very well fleshed out.  We are dropped into the middle of their lives, but given little in the way of back stories to explain their motivations. 

Rebecca Hall's Vicki is the stand-in for Woody Allen in this beautifully shot film; most of her lines sound as though they were uttered straight from the lips of Mr. Allen, which in a way they were.  But Hall delivers them in the same halting way in which Allen would have if he had been on film.  And seriously, does anyone really talk like Allen anymore?  When was the last time you heard two twenty-something Americans speak as though they had even an intermediate knowledge of their own languages' more intricate linguistic utterances?  

In the final analysis Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a surface movie; that is it's was fun to watch for a while, but then boredom set  in and I just wanted it to end.  The movie is wholly predictable while reveling nothing new, fun, exciting, or engaging about the human condition.