Most of the characters Woody Allen plays are really just himself, but Danny Rose is the kind of character that riffs on the one he created in “Manhattan.”
“Broadway Danny Rose” has the black and white veneer of his early masterpiece set in New York, but it’s irreverent, light and notoriously silly.
As a group of performers and comedians reminisce about their former talent agent Danny Rose (Allen), we get a wonderful fly on the wall perspective of showbiz. The irony here is that all of the people Danny Rose manages are hokey, goofy and awful acts that he has the deepest respect for, be it a guy who makes balloon animals or another with a singing parrot.
His biggest act is Lou Canova (Nick Apollo Forte), a fat and washed up Italian singer from the ’50s. He’s doing three shows a night in a sleazy hotel where the women all have big hair and crooked teeth. He does four shows on weekends. But as a nostalgia craze sets in, Lou starts getting attention and a big head. When he’s set to open for Milton Berle (appearing briefly as himself), he asks Danny to act as a beard for the woman he’s having an affair with so she can come see him perform.
The woman is Tina Vitale, played by an unrecognizable Mia Farrow. She has the firecracker energy that fits in perfectly with her big family of the Italian mafia. They mistake Danny as her new boyfriend and aim to have him killed, and the pair spend the day frenetically escaping as Danny continues to crack wise.
What’s great about Danny is that he’s always on. He instantly pegs himself as a noble figure willing to stick his neck out for any of his acts, and he’s so courteous and such a showman to even the mob that he can’t help but try his lame jokes even if it gets him into trouble. No, it doesn’t help to tell an 81 year old mafia wife she doesn’t look a day over 80.
As is true of any Allen film, there are enough great one-liners (“Take my Aunt Rose. Not a beautiful woman at all. She looked like something from a live bait store.”) to fill an afternoon, but some of my favorite moments are the ones that wink at the camera when things should be getting serious. When Danny and Tina are tied up together face to face on top of a table, their dire situation is made light by the fact that Danny remembers he once managed an escape artist who would shimmy to break free. When they finally do, the stark black and white inside a warehouse holding parade floats is nearly chilling, but Allen again makes light of the situation when helium escapes a balloon and they all talk in high-pitched squeals.
But “Broadway Danny Rose” does have a heart too, and it’s final shot is so oddly beautiful that it synches the movie at just the right moment. As light as this film is, it’s this movie that comes in between the masterpieces that reminded critics that Woody Allen really was the real deal.