‘Whatever Works?’ Oh, about half the time

Woody Allen has aged into that grandpa you hate taking out to Cracker Barrel because you never know what might come out of that mouth.

Sure, he’s still got the occasional Oscar-worthy bit of wit in him. But the clunky, dated “Hollywood Endings” and “Scoops” come along so often that it’s a relief when he doesn’t embarrass himself.

“Whatever Works” is an Allen comedy that works about half the time. He covers overly familiar ground: the futility of love, the meaningless of existence, age-inappropriate love affairs, sophisticated New Yorkers vs. the “hicks” who fill the rest of America. But he does it with just enough novelty for his fans to indulge him one more time.

Larry David (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”) is the surrogate Woody this time out. Boris, his character, is a sidewalk philosopher who holds court with his fellow academics (he used to teach physics), insults children during chess lessons and passes judgment on the “cretins” who surround him.

“I’m not a likable guy,” he confesses. “This is not the feel-good movie of the year.”

But Boris stops self-obsessing over his night terrors (his impending death has kept him up for years) long enough to help a runaway. Melodie (Evan Rachel Wood) is like “a character out of Faulkner,” Boris fumes, and that’s the way young Wood plays her – a drawling, naive, God-fearing yokel who doesn’t pick up the sarcasm of her protector.

You have to be as out of step with the culture as Boris (or Allen) to think that Southern stereotype works in the golden age of Britney and Billy Bob.

“Whatever” is still an amiable amble of a movie, bringing Melodie’s Jesus-loving mom (Patricia Clarkson) to New York, where she is promptly corrupted and becomes a hip photographer living in a menage a trois. She’s pursued by Melodie’s dad, turned into the funniest character in the movie by Ed Begley Jr.

Through it all, Allen’s advice to “filch a little joy” out of life wherever you find it comes out of David, who is far less at home repeating Allen’s lines than his own. Still, every now and then, vintage Allen writing meets vintage David rant, and it all comes together:

“A black got into the White House, he still can’t get a cab in New York!”

And those who listen for dirty-old-man rationalizations in Allen’s character’s monologues won’t have far to look this time.

“Whatever Works” isn’t deep, but with Grandpa Woody, you accept the warmed over, the recycled, just relieved he hasn’t made a spectacle of himself.