-We all know Woody has a weakness for the ’20s and ’30s. Here The Curse of the Jade Scorpion couldn’t be a more fitting title for a film set in 1940. In those days, detective novels – a literary genre then at its pinnacle – were being turned out practically by the bushel. [7]
-Woody Allen: "I think the '20s, '30s and '40s were three fabulous decades in Manhattan, because clothing styles were great, the music's great, and there was a ton of great Broadway theatre, nightclubs and so on. It was just a wonderful time to live. Now, of course, you also had no antibiotics and a lot of great things we take for granted today - cell phones, and so on. But it was a very romantic era, and those men and women with their uniforms and dresses, and the gangsters with their violin cases and machine guns in them, are all part of our folklore, and a very colourful part." [8]
-[The] film is primarily a very interesting mixture of two of the most recognizable Classic Hollywood genres, film noir and screwball comedy. What is more, I believe that The Curse of the Jade Scorpion is one of the most suitable films for an audience that is not familiar with Woody Allen’s cinematic language. Its rhythm and straight-cut delineation of the characters render it easier for beginners in American director’s world to perceive it. [11]
CW Briggs is a veteran insurance investigator, with many successes. Betty Ann Fitzgerald is a new employee in the company he works for, with the task of reorganizing the office. They don't like each other - or at least that's what they think. During a night out with the rest of the office employees, they go to watch Voltan, a magician who secretly hypnotizes both of them, in order to use them for his dirty schemes. The next evening already, Briggs makes his first robbery, and when he wakes up in the morning he has no memory of it. Things get really complicated when he starts investigating the case. Will he be able to uncover... himself? [1]
-Woody Allen: “I feel that maybe — and there are many candidates for this — but it may be the worst film I’ve made. I have great regrets and embarrassment.” [2]
-Woody Allen: "[The Curse of the Jade Scorpion is] a rather distressingly routine film noir pastiche, originated as "just a funny premise, and the rest is whatever spun out of that." [9]
-Allen wanted to re-shoot the film, September-style, but the expensive sets had already been destroyed and the budget wouldn’t allow for them to be re-created. [2]
-He explained that part of the problem was the period setting and the set building expense which made it too expensive to go back and reshoot anything. [4]
-My understanding of Woody Allen’s artistic trajectory was that it was a slow decline, but I see now that it’s more of spectacular, flaming crash. Just two years ago he directed Sweet and Lowdown, which was almost perfect, and now he’s made this — not the worst movie I’ve ever seen, but one of the least interesting. For decades it seemed like he could do no wrong and even his half-assed movies were pretty good. But The Curse of the Jade Scorpion shows us a dark new side of Allen — one that’s capable of making truly terrible films. [2]
-Paul Tatara for CNN wrote: "It seems that Allen now makes pictures out of habit, rather than desire or ambition, and the results often feel more like rough drafts than finished products. Laugh-wise, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion falls somewhere in the middle of what can accurately be described as his "mediocre period." It's not a complete, head-scratching washout, like "Alice" (1990) or "Celebrity" (1998). But there's hardly any steam to the narrative, and the insult-laden dialogue often sounds like wham-bam sitcom banter." [9]
-Allen has made yet another film that isn't bad enough to hate, but barely good enough to remember. He and his fans would be better off if he'd sit back for a couple of years, then start filming when he has a multidimensional idea, even a relatively lightweight one -- "Zelig" (1983) comes to mind -- that's worthy of his abilities. "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion" is a tap on the nose from a director who used to care enough to throw haymakers. And viewers need to be smacked out of their stupor more than ever. [9]
You snore like a grizzly bear with a sinus condition.
-However, in the ten years since its release, it is beginning to enjoy a new generation of cult status comedic recognition. [4]
-Roger Ebert for the Chicago Sun Times wrote: "...there are pleasures in the film that have little to do with the story. Its look and feel is uncanny; it's a tribute to a black-and-white era, filmed in color, and yet the colors seem burnished and aged. No noir films were shot in color in the 1940s, but if one had been, it would have looked like this. And great attention is given to the women played by Hunt, Berkley and Theron; they look not so much like the women in classic film noir as like the women on film noir posters--their costumes and styles elevate them into archetypes."
-The critics for the most part agreed with [Woody] and found the film mediocre. But as a technical exercise in said genre pastiche, the film cleverly manages to be a hybrid of film noir and screwball comedy (two apparent disparate genres), two black and white film genres here re-interpreted with a remarkably textured colour sense. The plot echoes the classic Double Indemnity of course and spins with the hypnosis craze that was popular in the 1940s. [10]
-I don’t want to oversell Woody Allen’s 31st feature, which I happen to like. The script is full of holes, most of the one-liners are weak and mechanical, and the plot — a nightclub magician gets two of his hypnotized subjects to steal jewels for him — is so deliberately stupid and contrived that one can probably enjoy it only by pretending it’s a routine, low-budget second feature on an old-fashioned double bill, which is obviously what Allen intended. Yet it’s possible for a picture to be not very good and still be likable — something that doesn’t happen very often for me with Allen’s pictures. [6]
-From the very first sequence Woody Allen warns the audience that this film is going to be a mash-up of Classic Hollywood genres. While I was watching the film for the third time I kept wondering about the director of photography, Zhao Fei: Is he lighting a noir film as if it was a screwball comedy or is he following the opposite direction? The shifts between the genres are so imperceptible that I came to the conclusion that cinematography in this film is invisible. As Patrick Keating contends in his book Hollywood Lighting: From the Silent Era to Film Noir (p. 98): ‘’Cinematography becomes invisible when the style is in perfect harmony with the story’’. Indeed Zhao Fei shifts deftly his lighting composition from one classic genre to another within a few seconds, exactly as Woody Allen proposes in his script. [11]
-Woody Allen in The Curse of the Jade Scorpion parodies mostly the noir cosmos in a lovable way. The American filmmaker is playing with the conventions of the noir genre (detectives, femmes fatales) in order to make the audience laugh. Still the costumes and the set decoration remain as close as they can to the style of the 1940s. [11]
-The notion of the present paper is that Woody Allen’s film balances the two popular genres. However, because of its happy ending, we could claim that The Curse of the Jade Scorpion leans slightly more to the screwball comedy. [11]
-In the meanwhile, Woody Allen satirizes the notion of the film noir detective by introducing the Coopersmith Brothers, who CW conceives them as totally inept. In this way, CW’s character is getting deconstructed as we understand that he is trying frantically to be the perfect detective (the truth actually is that he utilizes old tricks and lines like ‘’It takes one to catch one’’), he does not want to cooperate or share the kudos with anyone. This vain aspect of Woody Allen’s hero has much in common with Walter Neff’s repressed instincts in Double Indemnity. [11]
-As Ken Dancyger and Jeff Rush successfully state in their book Alternative Scriptwriting: successfully breaking the rules (2007, p. 133): ‘’The screwball comedy is the flip side of film noir. In both genres the (usually male) protagonist is viewed as a victim, and the antagonist is oftenthe woman he chooses (or is chosen by) and with whom he gets involved’’. In this movie CW gets involved with Betty Ann and Woody Allen is watching them closely as they are trying to achieve their own balance - a balance that according to Aristotle is the golden mean between the extremes. [11]
-I feel that The Curse of the Jade Scorpion is not only one of the most overlooked and accessible films of Woody Allen but it could also work as a guide to the classic Hollywood genres for the generations to come. It could work as a Trojan Horse which plants to the hearts of the younger cinephiles or artists the seed of love for a cinematicworld that is fading more and more as the technology progresses and the logic of the mass culture prevails. [11]
-This work of Woody Allen is a distillate of many years of writing efforts. Woody Allen has this concise way of combining and shifting from genre to genre that only a writer of his devotion and experience could have. When I first started to composure this paper I was trying to decipher the noirish aspect of the film. It is a noir aspect in the movie, indeed, but the later screenings proved to me that Woody Allen is trying to give us an idea of almost all of the popular genres of the ‘30’s and ‘40’s. He is not pompous, he is not like the old man recalling the better daysof his cinematic past. He is just keeping it alive using his one and only timeless weapon: his typewriter. [11]
-With its production budget of $26 million (with further reports of it reaching $33 million), this is Woody Allen's most expensive film. [1]
-Cinematographer Fei Zhao and Production Designer Santo Loquasto return. [1]
-Produced by Woody Allen’s sister, Letty Aronson, who’s also produced all of his movies since. [2
-Allen claims Nicholson and Tom Hanks both turned down roles in The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion. [3
-According to Woody Allen, this is one of his worst movies because he's leading it. He couldn't find anyone to play the lead and had to do it himself, even though he felt he wasn't a good fit for the part. [1]
-The protagonist was originally a private detective, but Allen switched it to insurance investigator when he found out he’d be playing the role himself (he didn’t think he’d be credible as a detective. [2]
-Woody Allen came up with the movie’s general plot 40 years earlier, when he conceived of it as a sketch for one of the shows he was writing for at the time. [2]
-Woody Allen: "I didn't think of anyone when I wrote it, but when I was casting and Helen's name came up, I immediately felt she was ideal. And we were very lucky as she was available. In fact, the whole cast I'd wanted was available - Charlize, Dan, everything just slotted in." [8]
-Woody Allen is very secretive with his scripts when he is working. Helen Hunt was allowed to read the entire script when she was offered the part, but she had to read it in one sitting and then give it back to the courier who was waiting to take it back. [1]
-In its opening weekend, the film played at slightly over 900 screens, the largest opening engagement for any Woody Allen film. However, the box office take that weekend was only $2.5 million. [1]
-For her audition, Elizabeth Berkley had her hair done in a Veronica Lake 1940s-style. Unfortunately on the way to the audition, she got caught in a rainstorm and her hair was ruined. [1]
-Despite the fact that this was filmed in the standard spherical format, "Filmed in Panavision" is listed in the end credits. [1]
-The song that plays every time someone gets hypnotized is “In A Persian Market” by Wilbur de Paris. [2]
Never trust a woman who whistles for her own cab.
My God, that girl's got a body that won't quit! - Quit? It won't take five minutes off for a coffee break.
-Roger Ebert for the Chicago Sun Times wrote: "All of this sounds like the setup for a wicked screwball comedy, but somehow "Curse of the Jade Scorpion" never quite lifts off. The elements are here, but not the magic. There are lines that you can see are intended to be funny, but they lack the usual Allen zing. Allen is as always a master of the labyrinthine plot (his characters turn up in the wrong place at the right time, and vice versa, with inexhaustible ingenuity), but we never much care how things turn out."
-Cinemablend critic wrote: It is not every film that could be this blandly written and frequently flawed and still be enjoyable. But, unlike Woody's last few films, which were actually more creative and better acted, Curse of the Jade Scorpion turns in an almost happy experience. Like its lead character, the film is scruffy, grimy, and old. But, it is also occasionally funny. Yes, the jokes are all recycled, the scenes are all transplants from better films, and Woody says all the same things he's said a million times before in every other film he has ever made. Still, Jade Scorpionmakes it a little bit funny all over again. Looking past the bad acting and the blatant script rip-offs, Jade Scorpion is hardly Allen's best, but there are worse things you could be watching. [5]
-James Sanford for the Kalamazoo Gazette wrote: "While it delivers a healthy supply of humor and a few snappy performances, it's so airy it practically floats right off the screen."
-Peter Travers for Rolling Stone wrote: "It's a real charmer from a director who feels that a knockabout romantic farce doesn't have to be mindless...No way would I have figured the Woodman - too fussy in Mighty Aphrodite — and Hunt — too strident in Pay It Forward — as a flirty fit, even in jest. But they make an oddly appealing pair of romantic sparring partners"
-Jonathan Rosenbaum for the Chicago Reader wrote: "[Allen] let his guard down and has allowed himself and his audience to relax -- something that doesn't often happen when the specters of class and European art hover over his pictures."
-Every Woody Allen Movie website critic Trevor Gilks wrote: "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion is the 33rd film Woody Allen has written and directed, and the first one that I have no qualms about calling a bad movie. Not a single one of his previous films had any problem holding my interest, and they all had at least one aspect worth praising. The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, though, is unfunny, brain-dead, and worst of all, astoundingly dull...It might have helped had Jade Scorpion been filmed in black & white. Fill the air with smoke and shadows, and when people are in the office, fill the soundtrack with whizzing typewriters, like in old movies. Maybe people could even talk in Carey Grant-esque exaggerated stage voices. The movie is aiming for comedy and serial-level mystery, yet it treats its period with grim sincerity. It’s realistic when it should be fun." [2]
-The Curse of the Jade Scorpion has a 45% Rotten Tomatoes rating as of 2021.
