A nostalgic, romantic comedy romp in New York that recalls the fifties and sixties, Peter Bogdanovich has sent us an affectionate love letter to the movie genre that he obviously adores; enjoying its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, ‘She’s Funny that Way’ is an admitted grace note to a career that brought us ‘The Last Picture Show’ (1971); ‘What’s Up Doc?’ (1972); ‘Paper Moon’ (1973) and ‘Mask’ (1985). It does not nearly match his masterful early work, but in the public screening of ’She’s Funny that Way’ at this year’s 71st edition in Venice, belly laughs careened through the massive and full Pala Biennale on the Lido.

The story follows ‘Glo Stick’ (Imogen Poots), a hooker who is literally ‘bought out’ and saved from her profession by a charitable but lecherous theatre Director Arnold (Owen Wilson) so she can pursue her real ambition to be an actress. All manner of mayhem breaks out and the romp begins when by coincidence, Glo Stick auditions for Arnold’s new play in which his unsuspecting wife Delta (Kathryn Hahn) is playing the lead. At one point, all of the key characters end up unwittingly at the same restaurant: the play’s writer Joshua (Will Forte); his girlfriend Jane (Jennifer Aniston) playing a shrink who needs a shrink; Joshua’s father, a gumshoe hired by one of Glo Stick’s former clients Judge Pendergast to spy on Glo; our philanthropic but fetish driven Director Arnold; his wife Delta and the play’s co-star Seth (Rhys Infans); and of course the object of everyone’s fascination, Glo. This is one of the oldest plot tricks in the romantic comedy genre but it works yet again here and surprisingly well in heightening the stakes, epiphanies of actual and intended infidelities abound — the film’s 90 plus minutes just breeze by.

Bogdanovich has unabashedly paid homage to not only Lubitch’s ‘Cluny Brown’ where he liberally borrows the ‘nuts to squirrels’ mantra from that film to help his protagonist Arnold inspire, seduce and transform his beneficiary prostitutes; but also those films like ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ with Audrey Hepburn as Holly Go Lightly (the Glo Stick alliteration is obvious) and the numerous manic Woody Allen films where New York City itself becomes a key character. In fact, many will take note of Allen’s strong influences both thematically and stylistically, but any comedy that’s set in New York City and about Broadway, Directors, Writers, Psycho-therapists and the Actor’s life will conjure up and owe a debt to ‘Manhattan’, ‘Broadway Danny Rose’, ‘Radio Days’, ’The Purple Rose of Cairo’, ‘Bullets over Broadway’ and of course, ‘Annie Hall’.