Woody opts for a smaller role

Offering proof that even the most recalcitrant old dog can learn new tricks if his chain gets jerked hard enough, Woody Allen has wisely opted out of playing the romantic lead in his latest film. Modestly conceived and affably low-key, “Anything Else” stars Jason Biggs as Jerry Falk, a comedy writer who’s head-over-heels in love with a feckless young actress winningly played by Christina Ricci. As Amanda, Ricci flounces about in various states of undress in front of Allen’s camera but rarely shares the same frame with the director, much less a roll in the hay.

This is welcome news, less because the sight of young women throwing themselves at Allen in movie after movie has strained credibility and critical patience, but because it signals a necessary change of pace for the filmmaker. Back when he was making movies that matter -- in the bygone era when people talked more about his films than his personal affairs, and with good reason -- Allen took on life with a ravenous passion. Love, sex, death, celebrity, infidelity, immortality, Sigmund Freud, Ingmar Bergman and the perils of wanting (and receiving) your very own Lolita -- no subject was too vast or too embarrassing for this comic force, who gorged on the big questions like a man terrified of going hungry.

Somewhere along the line, though -- and for me that line surfaced after the triumphant “Crimes and Misdemeanors” -- Allen stopped being hungry. He ceased asking big questions and began leaning on familiar routines, predictable answers, stale jokes, only occasionally going out on a new limb as he did in “Deconstructing Harry.” An often crudely unfunny poke at political correctness, that movie was calculated to offend (and did so with a vengeance), but had the virtue of being about how people scrape against their competing self-interests. Just as important, though, before it copped out by tendering a plea for the titular character’s basic decency, the movie showed Allen at his gnarliest. The irony being that by playing a monster, the writer-director came across as more human than he had in ages.

Since “Deconstructing Harry,” Allen has seemed balefully out of touch with contemporary life; he was a big-band musician who couldn’t swing. You just had to look at the films to know trouble was brewing. For years, he had worked with the same cinematographer, the great Carlo DiPalma, but in the late 1990s began hopscotching from one new director of photography to the next, robbing the work of the visual cohesion that had stamped it as much as the jazz soundtracks and opening credits. Around the same time, the A-list names that had once eagerly signed onto the newest Woody project no longer seemed as game. Where once there had been Leo and Julia there was now only a trail of television stars struggling to fill the big screen with their small-screen talent.

These changes hurt Allen’s films badly, but far worse was the sense that he no longer knew how to connect with an audience that had moved beyond japes about Freud or just didn’t get the joke. Seemingly stuck, the filmmaker flailed for relevance and ended up either retreating into the past (“The Curse of the Jade Scorpion”) or mounting retreads of his earlier features (“Small Time Crooks”). In contrast, “Anything Else” feels newly hatched. Some of the laugh lines creak as loudly as grandma’s rocker and the cultural references send up billows of dust -- Jerry and Amanda share a love of Bogie, Billie Holiday and Edna St. Vincent Millay -- but you believe these lovers live in a New York where hurt lives side by side with happiness.

Although he has a crucial supporting role as Jerry’s advisor and personal prophet of doom, a comic with a lethally violent streak, Allen doesn’t play a major on-screen part in “Anything Else.” That could be taken as a marketing strategy of last resort (the filmmaker’s newer features tend to fade fast), but it’s also possible to see this newfound modesty as a promising sign. By removing himself from the center of the frame -- and in doing so, relinquishing his long-cherished position as the principal object of desire in his work -- the filmmaker has taken a small yet crucial step toward rethinking what a Woody Allen movie can be in a post-Woody world. True, the characters are still stuck in their heads, but at least this time around they’re not also only stuck in his.

*

‘Anything Else’

MPAA rating: R, for a scene of drug use and some sexual references

Times guidelines: Fine for mature teenagers; some drug use, adult language, very mild sexual suggestiveness

Woody Allen...David Dobel

Jason Biggs...Jerry Falk

Stockard Channing...Paula

Danny DeVito...Harvey

Jimmy Fallon...Bob

Christina Ricci...Amanda

DreamWorks Pictures presents in association with Gravier Productions, released by DreamWorks Distribution LLC. Director-writer Woody Allen. Producer Letty Aronson. Director of photography Darius Khondji. Production designer Santo Loquasto. Editor Alisa Lepselter. Costume designer Laura Jean Shannon. Casting Juliet Taylor, Laura Rosenthal. Running time: 1 hour, 48 minutes.

In general release.