Play It Again, Sam

The film critic Allan Felix is left by his wife. He cannot talk to women on his own; Humphrey Bogart appears in his head and tells him what to say, and the advice ends in disaster every time. His closest friends, Dick and Linda, try to put him back together. Allan ends up in love with Linda. Herbert Ross directed. Woody Allen adapted his own 1969 play and plays Allan, with Diane Keaton as Linda and Tony Roberts as Dick. The three had played it together on Broadway as well. Allen explained plainly why he did not direct. He was not interested in going back over his own play as a film, and wanted someone who would make it look like a movie and widen its commercial reach. His own films to that point were scattered and marginal; he thought Play It Again, Sam would reach a mainstream audience. The calculation held. It finished fifteenth among the year's highest-grossing films with around 4.7 million dollars. Who it is for: viewers who like early Woody Allen and the running references to Casablanca. Who it is not for: anyone looking for his hand as a director. This is something he wrote and somebody else shot, and it is visually neutral.