| The Curse of the Jade Scorpion | |
| Director: | Woody Allen |
| Producer: | Letty Aronson |
| Cinematography: | Zhao Fei |
| Editing: | Alisa Lepselter |
| Music: | Dick Hyman |
| Runtime: | 103 minutes |
| Language: | English |
| Budget: | $33 million |
| Gross: | $18.9 million |
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion is a 2001 crime comedy film written and directed by and starring Woody Allen. The cast also features Dan Aykroyd, Helen Hunt, Brian Markinson, Wallace Shawn, David Ogden Stiers, and Charlize Theron. The plot concerns an insurance investigator (Allen) and an efficiency expert (Hunt) who are both hypnotized by a crooked hypnotist (Stiers) into stealing jewels.
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $18.9 million worldwide against a production budget of $33 million, becoming a commercial failure.
In 1940 New York City, efficiency expert Betty Ann Fitzgerald is secretly sleeping with her boss, Chris Magruder, who promises her that they will pursue their relationship in public once he finalizes his divorce with his wife.
During a dinner at the Rainbow Room, stage magician Voltan calls on Betty Ann and her co-worker, insurance investigator C.W. Briggs, to be in his hypnotism act. Using "Madagascar" and "Constantinople" on them, respectively, as trigger words to put them in a trance, the two are given the suggestion that they are newlyweds and in love before being reawakened. Returning home for the evening, C.W. receives a call from Voltan, who says "Constantinople" to put him in a trance and order him to steal jewels. C.W. does not remember committing these crimes after waking up and decides to investigate. He soon notices Betty Ann's behavior is "suspicious" (it is actually related to her affair with Chris). While sneaking into her house, he witnesses Chris telling her that he has reconciled with his wife and will not have a divorce. When Chris leaves, a distraught Betty Ann gets drunk and tries to jump out of a window. C.W. stops her and spends the night keeping her from killing herself.
Eventually, investigations start picking up evidence pointing to C.W., leading to his arrest. He escapes to Betty Ann's place, where she grudgingly hides him. Thinking that C.W. is no longer available, Voltan calls Betty Ann, saying "Madagascar" to put her in a trance and steal for him. While in that state, the subliminal suggestion of being in love leads her to seduce C.W. His co-workers George Bond and Alvin "Al" eventually realize the initial hypnosis is the cause of the robberies. George, an amateur magician, frees C.W. of the trigger word and restores his memories. C.W. returns to Betty Ann's apartment to find her missing. Realizing Betty Ann must have been hypnotized again, he goes to the site where she is delivering the jewels to Voltan. Voltan tries to escape but is caught by the police. The still-hypnotized Betty Ann expresses her love for C.W., who kisses her before erasing her memories of the event.
Back at work, C.W. learns Betty Ann and Chris are going on a romantic getaway and decides to resign. Chris understands and says that if C.W. leaves, the company will give him his blessing and if he stays, Chris will give him a raise. He also intends to force Betty Ann to retire after they get married, as he does not want his wife to be working with him. Disturbed, C.W. heads to Betty Ann's office to inform her of his resignation and say goodbye. The two have a parting drink. Outside, Al says that he will quit if C.W. does, and the rest of the staff hail him as a hero. C.W. dismisses his success as luck. George then reveals that a hypnotized person would not do anything that they would not when in a normal state. Al gets C.W. to admit that he loves Betty Ann.
At Al's urging, C.W. goes after Betty Ann, who is about to leave for Paris with Chris. C.W. proposes to Betty Ann and confesses his love for her. As Betty Ann and Chris are about to depart, a desperate C.W. says "Madagascar". Betty Ann, who is now in an amorous state, tells Chris that she is staying and announces that she will marry C.W., confessing to C.W. that she fell in love with him the moment that they met. Chris runs to stop his divorce while Al presents C.W. with the jade scorpion as a gift. C.W. and Betty Ann go to her apartment and have sex. As they are leaving, George reveals that he had deprogrammed Betty Ann the night before. C.W. eventually realizes that Betty Ann is not hypnotized and is going with him willingly.
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion grossed $7.5 million in the United States and Canada, and $11.4 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $18.9 million, against a production budget of $33 million.[1] In the United States and Canada, the film debuted at number 11 on its opening weekend, grossing $2.4 million from 903 theaters.[2]
The film received mixed reviews from critics. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 45% based on 123 reviews, with an average rating of 5.2/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "The writing for Scorpion is not as sharp as Woody Allen's previous movies as most of the jokes fall flat."[3] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 52 out of 100, based on 31 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[4]
Allen himself seems to be in relative agreement with some critics, remarking that it is perhaps his worst movie. Allen has said he felt he let down the rest of the cast by casting himself as the lead. 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 re-shoot anything. Allen re-shot the entirety of his 1987 drama September after he felt he got the casting wrong.[5] Allen remarked he offered the role of C.W. Briggs to both Jack Nicholson and Tom Hanks, but had to take it when both refused.
However, in the ten years since its release, it is beginning to enjoy a new generation of cult status comedic recognition. Roger Ebert 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. Hunt in particular has fun with a wisecracking dame role that owes something, perhaps, to Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday."[6]
The film features a variety of 1940s era music.[7]