Video Review

Sweet and Lowdown (2013)

MPAA Rating: PG-13
Reviewed by Troy Patterson | Jun 16, 2000
EW's GRADE
B-

Details Movie Rated: PG-13; Genres: Comedy, Drama; With: Samantha Morton and Sean Penn; Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics

Woody Allen's 29th feature, Sweet and Lowdown, is an insubstantial mockumentary in which Depression-era jazz guitarist Emmet Ray (Sean Penn) pimps, boozes, squanders dough, plays heavenly guitar, steals from friends, shoots at rats, and squints at the ladies — most notably, a mute laundress named Hattie (Samantha Morton). The beauty of Morton's Oscar-nominated performance is the way she finds, with a gamine's grin and an orphan's pout, more ways to say I love you than Penn's tormented hero could begin to understand. B-

Originally posted Jun 13, 2000 Published in issue #545 Jun 16, 2000 Order article reprints