Movies

The 10 worst Woody Allen movies ever

Older man hooking up with much, much younger woman? Check. Crotchety Woody Allen character spewing dim misanthropy? Check. Magic? Check.

Woody Allen’s latest film, “Magic in the Moonlight,” out this week, has many of the defining elements that pop up repeatedly in his most insufferable movies.

Here’s a countdown of the 10 worst films he has ever directed.

‘Small Time Crooks’ (2000)

Trying for undiluted screwball comedy, Woody mainly reminded us that he was running low on gags.

He starred as a bumbling dishwasher who somehow pulls off a bank heist and enters the snobby world of a British art expert (Hugh Grant) who threatens to steal his wife (Tracey Ullman).

‘Melinda and Melinda’ (2005)

A wheezing, schematic setup — two playwrights sitting in a cafe arguing whether life is essentially comic or tragic as they launch into rival stories about a flustered woman arriving at a dinner party — amounts to an invitation from Allen that we rate his moany, Swedish death-obsessed side against his comic chops.

Woody, it’s no contest. Will Ferrell does have some amusing moments in the comic half, but the tragic side is like a parody of Scandinavian gloom.

‘You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger’ (2010)

Casting Josh Brolin as the Woody character was just the first of many mistakes Allen made with this one.

Brolin improbably plays an intellectual novelist who peeps on a hot neighbor (Freida Pinto) who isn’t taken aback when he tells her he’s been leering at her as she undresses. Allen tosses in familiar, half-baked plot lines about art, adultery, the occult and even an adorably lowbrow hooker like the ones in “Deconstructing Harry” and “Mighty Aphrodite.”

‘Magic in the Moonlight’ (2014)

In a would-be period romp set in the French countryside, Colin Firth plays a cynical, world-weary magician who becomes convinced that a visiting American girl (Emma Stone) has supernatural mind reading powers.

Like many of Allen’s films, this one seems like a collage of elements from earlier ones (such as the scene in “Manhattan” in which the two leads fall for each other after rushing into a planetarium during a sudden thunderstorm).

‘Scoop’ (2006)

This one featured Woody as a corny magician in London whose encounter with an American journalism student (Scarlett Johansson) leads her to a tip from a dead reporter (Ian McShane), who tells her that a debonair aristocrat (Hugh Jackman) killed him.

The plot consists of dull sleuthing and Johansson doing an alarming Woody impression as a bespectacled nerd.

‘September’ (1987)

Aiming to replicate the success of 1978’s downbeat, but effective, “Interiors,” Woody’s second full-on drama brings together six lovelorn adults trapped in unsatisfying circumstances who spend the movie moping around a country house longing for one another while hoping to be mistaken for Chekhov or Strindberg characters.

Bonus points for yielding the least-interesting movie poster of all time.

‘Hollywood Ending’ (2002)

Not trying very hard to poke fun at himself, Woody plays a washed-up director (whose love interests are Debra Messing, 33 years younger, and Téa Leoni, 30 years younger) who is stricken with a bout of hysterical blindness.

There’s one funny joke in the movie, but it’s the last one: The movie he makes without being able to see is a huge hit in France.

‘The Curse of the Jade Scorpion’ (2001)

It’s painful to watch Woody, who plays an insurance investigator, flirting with Helen Hunt (28 years younger) and Charlize Theron (39 years younger), though the interactions aren’t as awkward as the clunky dialogue.

Turning to cheesy stage magicians yet again, Allen picked David Ogden Stiers to play an illusionist who puts the Allen character under a hypnotic spell and induces him to become a jewel thief. Wackiness follows.

‘Celebrity’ (1998)

Kenneth Branagh set the standard for the most annoying Woody Allen impression ever, playing a showbiz journo on the trail of an ill-behaved star (Leonardo DiCaprio), in a wan take on the films of Federico Fellini, whom Allen more successfully channeled in 1980’s “Stardust Memories.”

‘Whatever Works’ (2009)

Larry David plays a misanthropic ex-Columbia professor who marries a Southern scamp (Evan Rachel Wood) he finds on his doorstep.

David’s take on a Woody Allen curmudgeon comes across as bilious, blackhearted and crude when he’s supposed to be adorably grumpy, and his relationship with the granddaughter-ish Wood (40 years younger than David) is surreal bordering on nauseating.