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| The Curse of the Jade Scorpion | 
 enlarge | Director: Woody Allen
Actors: Woody Allen, Dan Aykroyd, Helen Hunt, Charlize Theron, Elizabeth Berkley
Studio: Dreamworks Video
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.99
Buy Used: $1.73
You Save: $13.26 (88%)
New (49) Used (52) from $1.73
Avg. Customer Rating:  59 reviews
Sales Rank: 42774
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dvd-video, Widescreen, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 103
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.2 x 0.6
MPN: DRWD89268D
ISBN: 0783264704
UPC: 667068926828
EAN: 9780783264707
ASIN: B00003CY6A
Theatrical Release Date: 2001
Release Date: January 29, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
An insurance investigator & an efficiency expert who hate each other are both hypnotized by a crooked hypnotist with a jade scorpion into stealing jewels. Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 04/12/2005 Starring: Woody Allen Dan Aykroyd Run time: 102 minutes Rating: Pg13
Amazon.com
With The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Woody Allen pays another visit to his idealized past, and his retro blend of humor and nostalgia will surely satisfy the filmmaker's most loyal fans. Like The Purple Rose of Cairo, Radio Days, and Sweet and Lowdown, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion is physically impeccable: its period-perfect costumes and sets capture 1940 New York with splendid authenticity and are further enhanced by the burnished glow of Zhao Fei's cinematography. And like those earlier films, Jade Scorpion mines comedic gold from its timeframe, molding it into a plot laced with expert zingers that could only spring from a keen awareness of comedic tradition. Add an appealing roster of costars (including Elizabeth Berkley and Charlize Theron) and you've got vintage Woody that perks right along. The movie's also as trivial as it is engaging; hack off 30 minutes and it might have had the delirious precision of early Marx Brothers classics. Instead, Allen's goofy conceit--enemies falling in love by hypnotic suggestion--is stretched to absurdity when efficiency expert Betty Ann "Fitz" Fitzgerald (Helen Hunt) is hypnotically attracted to seasoned insurance investigator C.W. Briggs (Allen), despite their office enmity. Plus, a jewel-heist caper masterminded by the nightclub hypnotist (David Ogden Stiers) casts them both as suspects! Woody harvests a bumper crop of old-fashioned laughs from this predicament, and despite their conspicuous age difference and occasional awkward delivery, Hunt and Allen exchange volleys of dialogue like a seasoned comedy team. Dan Aykroyd is also good in a stodgy supporting role, but Jade Scorpion remains a mixed blessing--a welcomed throwback to comedy's yesteryear, from a master funnyman who's struggling to maintain relevance in the present. --Jeff Shannon
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| Customer Reviews: Read 54 more reviews...
 TYPICAL ALLEN April 11, 2008
A FUN WAY TO PASS THE TIME. AS USUAL, THE BACKGROUND MUSIC IS GREAT. PRODUCT ARRIVED IN A TIMELY MANNER.
Woody Allen should be an official genre November 7, 2007
I really do like Woody Allen. He sticks to a basic format and usually doesn't stray to far from it (Match Point being the exception) but you can always count on him, and that's what matters. Sure, he plays himself in every movie he's ever written himself into, but he's just so likable that it doesn't bother me. Many will say he's been been on a perpetual downslide over the past decade and a half but consider how many movies he's put out during that time.
I really liked this one. It was clever, very funny, and had a well rounded cast. It was a period piece which was a nice touch and music to suit that period during the 40's. Woody works as an insurance investigator and when jewls begins dissapearing from homes where he set up the security systems, he is hot on the trail. What he doesn't know is during a dinner out he was hypnotized into doing it himself! Meanwhile, Helen Hunt is having an affair with boss Dan Aykroyd and Woody suspects her suspicious behavior as a sign that she is the jewl thief. A situation ripe for comedy.
If the movie has any short comings it's that it maybe follows the Woody formula a little too closely to the point where it becomes predictable. In typical Woody fashion, he ends up with a girl half his age (I don't think the age of his love interests have increased since Diane Keaton in Annie Hall) after rejecting a smoking hot siren even younger (very similar to Hollywood Ending). Not that it ruins it or anything, just very Woody. Still, a fun movie worth checking out.
Woulda been a competent send-up of Thirties Screwball Comedies but kidnapped, sabotaged and deepened by Allen's personal life October 23, 2007
This film could have been an all right parody of Thirties Screwball Comedies like Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, etc., but there is too much going on to sabotage this, like Joyce's increasingly aggressive narrative voices in Ulysses, which could have been an interesting enough romance, but for those intrusive voices we keep hearing in his head, which make of it something immortal.
Just so with this film. It could have been fully funny fluff, but for the subtext of Allen's personal life, possibly the actual impulse for creating this very funny but dark film.
We know the acrimonious and excruciating ending of his marriage to Mia Farrow and the incredibly cruel rupture of any relationship with his deeply beloved and only son Satchmo. Thus in this film we see throughout the theme of totalitarianism (including reference to Mussolini and the Chancellor with the little moustache, as well as the extreme totalitarianism of the hypnotist, who may himself be hypnotised under the power of his own mysterious assistant) as exercised against Mr. Allen by the Divorce Courts of Connecticut, but more importantly the theme of two people who deeply love one another to the point of becoming afraid of their own love and need for the other, having suffered great losses and deceptions and trauma in the past, and who thus can only express their deep love for one another under the safety of the deception of hypnosis.
Just as Mick Jagger sang out his need for the Nicaraguan Bianca in Miss You (if you can call that singing), this is Allen's love song for the lost Mia. See it again. View it in this way and you will see: this reading holds up. This reading makes of this film something infinitely deeper than the surface story. See it again and you will see.
Otherrwise we see a film which does not achieve its objectives. Otherwise the elements do not make sense and the center will not hold. Hunt is otherwise too old to be a recent Vassar grad, and without the Mia subtext, what's with all the drinking and smoking anyway? The hateful words between herself and Allen's character CW may be far more than riffing for this film.
The very young Charlize Theron whom the hypnotised Allen character CW walks away from may be a declaration to Mia that he never touched that young girl.
With whom did Mia leave? What man swept her away? Here we see a married Dan Akroyd character seducing the Hunt character while still married. We see Dan Akroyd as overweight as Brando in Apocalypse Now, and simply dull. What would Woody say about the man who stole Mia away?
Otherwise this is Woody's film. He really has very little to play against, and he is best when alone on screen. What does this say about his life after divorce. We really see no convincing spark with Hunt; he is far too old in this picture, which introduces a distracting element of May-December romance (especially after the irrelevant Theron interjection), or do we see here again reflections of Allen's real life with Kim(?) Previn.
Watch him work alone on screen, the long rolling shot stomping down the office hall to confront Hunt in anger, displaying his cinematographer's talent. And one of the funniest scenes in modern cinema is Allen's rooftop escape from the police station, a silent series of quotes from other great physical comedians. His frightened entry through the door echoes Richard Prior with a touch of Kramer. His crossing the roof resembles clearly, as does much in this film, Woody's deep and incomprehensible appreciation of the Bob Hope movies, an appreciation which he here makes clear and effective. His climbing the ladder is nothing but pure Chaplin. Quite a journey through a century of comedy in one quick scene, and pure genius.
Nevertheless everyone in this film feels too old, except for Theron and the secretary whose cat must get fed. It is a joy to see the great Professor Irwin Corey once more, who works hard to save the joy of this film. It is also intersting to observe wandering the office at the opening the actor who valiantly worked to salvage Jarmusch's Ghost Dog - The Way of the Samurai. Otherwise this is a much darker film than it appears, in which you truly will laugh and will cry.
 Good May 14, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I rated "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion" on a special Woody Allen scale; "What's New Pussycat", Good, Better, and Best in that order. "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion" comes in as "Good" which, obviously, isn't Bad. It has an interesting plot twist with a fair amount of humor. However, things just don't seem to click on all cyllanders in this movie. Oddly, Woody seems to have put himself in a role that he either wasn't up to or lost interest in. The way the characters interact with one another seems a bit stiff. The movie seems to take a bit too much time to gets it's point across. There seems to be more potential for humor than actual realization thereof. In addition, there seems to be a lack of "energy" in this film. However, these are criticisms of a Woody Allen movie; any other writer/director/actor would rate a "4" for humor and originality. I'm glad I watched this movie but I couldn't get over my great expectations.
"It's a match made in heaven... by a retarded angel." April 2, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
"The Curse of the Jade Scorpion" is a romantic comedy/crime/mystery set in New York City of the 1940s which involves a love-hate relationship between veteran insurance investigator CW Briggs (Woody Allen) and his new boss Betty Ann Fitzgerald (Helen Hunt). One night, while watching the Magician's show with the rest of the employees, they are both hypnotized by a sinister hypnotist with a jade scorpion who later uses them into unknowingly stealing jewels for him. Had this comedy been written and directed by someone else, it would've been a disaster but Allen with his magic touch, had produced a funny and charming delight. That's what my husband called it after we enjoyed it together and I can't agree more. I love Ellington's music, the whole 40-th setting, and Woody's one-liners. His face in the scene where he and Helen Hunt were both hypnotized was simply hilarious - the guy knows how to do a physical comedy to perfection. I don't care if this picture has been called "a lesser Allen's movie" - it is still much better than majority of the comedies that come out every year. Even "lesser Allen" is enjoyable and memorable.
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