CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Merolliv I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Kinley This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

ElMaruecan82 ... and that's the mark of geniuses.Now seriously, how come I never heard about Emmett Ray? I might not be a 'jazz aficionado', not 'Woody Allen' level anyway, but I humbly believe I would be aware of the existence of the second best guitar-player in the world… after Django Reinhart (the film's running-gag). But then again, I gave "Sweet and Lowdown", Allen's half-drama half-documentary musical biopic, the benefit of the doubt, after all, if I was familiar with Django yet incapable to tell you the name of one of his titles, it was all the more plausible not to be familiar with the second best.So, I started the film and I was immediately hooked by Emmett, the character, here's a guy whose eccentricity is displayed before his talent. He's played by Sean Penn using his whiny worn-out voice of the guy who doesn't try to disguise his lack of huskiness, he's got the most original haircut, the most stylish suit, he's a womanizer, even a bit of pimp, and while everyone's waiting for his performance, he's playing pool, having a few drinks and talk with one of his protegees. Call it the 'Amadeus' syndrome but his eccentricity is so flashily displayed that there's no way to believe this guy isn't talented. So he meets the public and starts playing and although I'm no expert, I thought I slightly recognized the first theme he played, which seems to have been borrowed from a very popular French ballad.That should have given me a hint, but no, as the plot advanced, no matter how weird things got, I didn't see it coming, Emmett was too original not to be real. So I believed the story about the moon, I believed that he met a mute girl and lived perhaps his longest and sweetest romance before getting back to his old habits and dumping her. I believed the love story with the wannabe writer, the marriage, the adultery with a bodyguard and it's not until the final act, that I had enough of bizarreness, I had to check. Because I have a bad habit, before watching a biopic, I like to check the basic details, you know birth year, death, the 'how' and 'why' etc.I wanted to pause the movie and see when Emmett Ray died, was it in the 30's so I might expect some depression, suicide or assassination or what? So, I google his name and found out he was a fictional character, I couldn't believe it. I didn't even suspect that after "Zelig", Woody Allen would strike again in a jazz-related documentary. I swallowed everything, I mean you have Woody Allen talking passionately about his kind of music and many jazz experts debating on the veracity of some details, and come on, the second best guitar player after Django. It's all fake… but I guess I'm too stubborn to accept it..Woody Allen makes a "Spinal Tap" like film, and while the jazz player doesn't exist, jazz does, the Great Depression did, these kinds of people too, and these fans of jazz, you better believe they're tangible. So why not exploring the heritage of jazz and reinvent a world that would feel like a kaleidoscope of the environment that made a music like jazz the only possible enjoyable one. By choosing a fictional character, Allen allowed him to be grander and more original and appealing more than any real jazz-man. Emmett Ray knows how to get women but not to keep them, he has no social skills, no sense of commitment or of money but his talent is all he's got and when he doesn't play his guitar, he's regressing. This is how music is important to him. It's all about the music.And it's also very fitting that the girl he loved was mute but not deaf, she has an access to his talent, she knows what she loves in him and she allows him to be natural but she can't step on his territory, he has a freedom of total expression, and leaves her when his heart is being progressively tamed. He's an artist, so wrapped up in his conviction to be an artist that he can't afford to live a normal life. It's like the musician inspiring Allen and Allen inspiring the musician, a sort of Jekyll and Hyde duality. And both Sean Penn and Samantha Morton are excellent in their respective performances showcasing the natural harmony between the zany yin of a lunatic doofus and the quiet and benevolent yang of a patient understanding women. We love Emmett through Hattie and despite Emmett. And because such a sweet gal like Hattie loved him, we give him the benefit of the doubt.The second relationship should have told me something wasn't right, Uma Thurman played Blanche, the writer whose goal is to write about men with fascinating occupations, and she's so different from Hattie that Emmett keeps her like an obvious trophy-wife and if there's ever one thing Emmett cherishes more than his guitar, it's his ego, so it's all come naturally until she finally cheats on him looking for a wilder escapism with one of Emeett's boss bodyguards. I guess Allen went overboard at the end so that the only idiots who didn't know it was fictional could finally realize they were played with… but this part had the merit to have a funny punch-line, one that couldn't do without a cameo of Django Reinhart.Emmett then vanishes after a few hit records, and there's nothing left about him, but who knows maybe there were many Emmett-likes who wanted to be the next Django, we can't be sure that such a larger-than-life never existed and Woody Allen's false tribute to a fictional jazz player becomes the magnificent tribute of a real art.

namashi_1 Mr.Cinema aka Woody Allen, Emerges a WINNER yet again with his 1999 Cinematic Delight 'Sweet and Lowdown'. A Highly Entertaining & Hilarious Film, that also packs in tremendous performances.'Sweet and Lowdown' Synopsis: In the 1930s, fictional jazz guitarist Emmet Ray idolizes Django Reinhardt, faces gangsters and falls in love with a mute.'Sweet and Lowdown' explores Emmet Ray's Journey, beautifully. Its Funny & Very Entertaining. Allen's Writing & Direction, both, are Delightful. The Master Storyteller Emergers a Winner yet again with 'Sweet and Lowdown'. Cinematography is good. Editing & Art Design, are perfect.Performance-Wise: Sean Penn is Tremendous as Emmet Ray. Like Always, The Legendary Actor gives his all & shines from start to end. Samantha Morton is fantastic. She delivers a career best performance in here. Uma Thurman is fluffy in a cameo, while Anthony LaPaglia is impressive.On the whole, 'Sweet and Lowdown' is a must see. Woody Allen is Mr.Cinema! The One & Only!

elshikh4 It seems like ages since the last time I watched a decent movie by (Woody Allen). Let's see; from Annie Hall (1977) to Everyone Says I Love You (1996) things were good. Then Deconstructing Harry (1997), Celebrity (1998), Small Time Crooks (2000), The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001), Hollywood Ending (2002), and Melinda and Melinda (2004) ALL had problems, sometimes more than their good points. In the middle of both phases is where Sweet and Lowdown exists. Now this is a good movie on all the levels.Why Emmet Ray couldn't be Django Reinhardt ? It's simple. He isn't that bold when it comes to express his feelings. So that's why he didn't tell the girl he loved (who loved him as well) that he loves her, and lost her at the end. I think there is a reason why Allen did a movie about that man, else paying a tribute to jazz guitarist he loves. Allen is the complete opposite of Emmet Ray. Dear Woody just can't get enough of showing himself to the audience through the characters of his movies during the last 35 years (some of them played by him). Or maybe, after all of these years, Woody just sees that he didn't express enough, feeling a bound with Ray as if the last is a symbol for the suppression which could kill a talented artist. We can read this movie as a conscience of importunate fear Allen has.Anyway, I loved it. It was fantastic how Allen, out of some unfinished or uncertain stories, made his own version of Emmet Ray's bio. However, I felt something was missing with the background of the character. His history was a bit vague. I know well that he was poor to the extent that made him afraid of being poor again, so he worked a lot, threw money away for looking rich, having this strange love to steal (he, to some extent, just wants to own). But on the other hand, I didn't understand what the secret of his fear to express was ?, was it some kind of compulsory obsession ?, was it something in his childhood ?, was he that shy of his early poor life ?, another unanswered question : He drank much to forget what : his fear ?, or his inner belief that he wouldn't be great due to this very fear ?There are some nice moments. The ones with his wife were so serene and hilariously comic. Samatha Morton is an angel from heaven. She was sent to do this role. Now I knew that angels can't look like they're acting at all, they can be so realistic and damn believable ! Sean Penn proves that he's a master of characters. He did it nearly flawlessly. However, he was lowdown and no sweet ?!! And finally, there is nothing, and I mean nothing, can be more joyful more than witnessing how the old jazz tracks, that Woody adores, fit perfectly in the movie he directs. Ahhh, I felt deep relief about that apart !It's romantic, funny, sad. And based on true and false stories (as if there isn't a history that suffers from the same thing ?!). (Sweet and Lowdown) is where all the elements that make a usual Woody Allen's movie shared to make, at last, a fine Woody Allen's movie. The moon that Ray dreamed of and feared of, Allen captured and rode it.

secondtake Sweet and Lowdown (1999)Besides the funny idea of creating a musician who never existed and having talking heads of real experts to support the idea (done better in Zelig and, more parallel, The Rutles), there is very little happening there to keep the movie going. There are a few funny lines, for sure, but many more that are either reused Allen quips or just flat comebacks. At first Sean Penn seems perfect for his role, and he fortunately plays his part no imitating Allen. But either he has so little to work with or he plays this guitarist so superficially, it never takes off, we never feel for him or his situation. The fact that he "fades away" at the end of his career is something like the whole movie, which didn't quite form in the first place. Funny and clever the way Scoop is funny and clever--not too much.Samantha Morton puts in a great performance as a mute woman. And the music, a la Django, is unassailable.