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starring: Dan Aykroyd, Helen Hunt, Charlize Theron, Woody Allen, David Ogden Stiersdirected by: Woody Allen
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9780783264691
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
ISBN: 0783264690
Label: DreamWorks Home Entertainment
Manufacturer: DreamWorks Home Entertainment
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: DreamWorks Home Entertainment
Release Date: September 10, 2002
Running Time: 103 minutes
Sales Rank: 22179
Studio: DreamWorks Home Entertainment
Theatrical Release Date: 2001
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
With The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Woody Allen pays another visit to his idealized past, and his retro blend of humor and nostalgia will surely satisfy the filmmaker's most loyal fans. Like The Purple Rose of Cairo, Radio Days, and Sweet and Lowdown, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion is physically impeccable: its period-perfect costumes and sets capture 1940 New York with splendid authenticity and are further enhanced by the burnished glow of Zhao Fei's cinematography. And like those earlier films, Jade Scorpion mines comedic gold from its timeframe, molding it into a plot laced with expert zingers that could only spring from a keen awareness of comedic tradition. Add an appealing roster of costars (including Elizabeth Berkley and Charlize Theron) and you've got vintage Woody that perks right along.
The movie's also as trivial as it is engaging; hack off 30 minutes and it might have had the delirious precision of early Marx Brothers classics. Instead, Allen's goofy conceit--enemies falling in love by hypnotic suggestion--is stretched to absurdity when efficiency expert Betty Ann 'Fitz' Fitzgerald (Helen Hunt) is hypnotically attracted to seasoned insurance investigator C.W. Briggs (Allen), despite their office enmity. Plus, a jewel-heist caper masterminded by the nightclub hypnotist (David Ogden Stiers) casts them both as suspects! Woody harvests a bumper crop of old-fashioned laughs from this predicament, and despite their conspicuous age difference and occasional awkward delivery, Hunt and Allen exchange volleys of dialogue like a seasoned comedy team. Dan Aykroyd is also good in a stodgy supporting role, but Jade Scorpion remains a mixed blessing--a welcomed throwback to comedy's yesteryear, from a master funnyman who's struggling to maintain relevance in the present. --Jeff Shannon
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - TYPICAL ALLEN
A FUN WAY TO PASS THE TIME. AS USUAL, THE BACKGROUND MUSIC IS GREAT. PRODUCT ARRIVED IN A TIMELY MANNER.
Rating: - Woody Allen should be an official genre
I really do like Woody Allen. He sticks to a basic format and usually doesn't stray to far from it (Match Point being the exception) but you can always count on him, and that's what matters. Sure, he plays himself in every movie he's ever written himself into, but he's just so likable that it doesn't bother me. Many will say he's been been on a perpetual downslide over the past decade and a half but consider how many movies he's put out during that time.
I really liked this one. ... Read More
Rating: - Woulda been a competent send-up of Thirties Screwball Comedies but kidnapped, sabotaged and deepened by Allen's personal life
This film could have been an all right parody of Thirties Screwball Comedies like Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, etc., but there is too much going on to sabotage this, like Joyce's increasingly aggressive narrative voices in Ulysses, which could have been an interesting enough romance, but for those intrusive voices we keep hearing in his head, which make of it something immortal.
Just so with this film. It could have been fully funny fluff, but for the subtext of Allen's personal ... Read More
Rating:  - Good
I rated "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion" on a special Woody Allen scale; "What's New Pussycat", Good, Better, and Best in that order. "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion" comes in as "Good" which, obviously, isn't Bad. It has an interesting plot twist with a fair amount of humor. However, things just don't seem to click on all cyllanders in this movie. Oddly, Woody seems to have put himself in a role that he either wasn't up to or lost interest in. The way the characters interact with one another ... Read More
Rating: - "It's a match made in heaven... by a retarded angel."
"The Curse of the Jade Scorpion" is a romantic comedy/crime/mystery set in New York City of the 1940s which involves a love-hate relationship between veteran insurance investigator CW Briggs (Woody Allen) and his new boss Betty Ann Fitzgerald (Helen Hunt). One night, while watching the Magician's show with the rest of the employees, they are both hypnotized by a sinister hypnotist with a jade scorpion who later uses them into unknowingly stealing jewels for him. Had this comedy been written ... Read More
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