“Rifkin’s Festival” – Nothing to celebrate [MOVIE REVIEW]
Wallace Shawn as Mort Rifkin and Gina Gershon as Sue Rifkin in “Rifkin’s Festival.” Photo courtesy of Gravier Productions and Mediapro Studio. Dipping back into the “oh woe is me” dramedy of relationship disintegration that he loves so much, writer-director Woody Allen has found a new victim to be his alter ego. Allen has made his fortune, starting when he was a standup comic, mining the schtick of the hapless man reaching above his pay grade for what is usually the equivalent of the shiksa goddess, inevitably losing her because his insecurities are too much to bear rather than because she wants a handsomer, smarter, smoother leading man. Now in his dotage, we should be glad he has, for the most part, stopped taking this role himself in his recent films. But because he’s not done mining this familiar field, he has relied on others to play that role. Until now, the most annoying actor to take on the Allen persona was Jesse Eisenberg in “To Rome with Love” (2012). But Allen has outdone himself with his new emotional doppelganger, Wallace Shawn. Shawn plays Mort Rifkin in Allen’s latest foray into emotional angst, superficiality, and pseudo-intellectualism, “Rifkin’s Festival.” Mort…
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