Woody Allen said in Manhattan that Groucho Marx was first on his list of reasons to keep on living. His new film, a return to his beloved New York after an extended European sojourn, opens with Groucho singing ‘Hello, I Must Be Going’ from Animal Crackers. It serves as the movie’s theme song, perfectly summarizing the world view of his misanthropic hero, Boris Yellnikoff. Yellnikoff (David) is a nuclear physicist who was once almost nominated for a Nobel Prize. Boris hates everyone and everything. Enter Melody St. Ann Celestine (Wood), a fresh-faced innocent from the South, and perhaps the first person Boris has ever met who subscribes fully to the theory of his greatness. She sets in rotation a wheel of characters who all discover for themselves that in life we must accept whatever works to make us happy.

Whatever Works charts a journey for Allen, one from the words of Groucho to the wisdom of the French poet Pascal, who informs us, as Allen once reminded us, that the heart has its reasons.

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times