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At first, I was convinced I hated it. Early on, Larry David, playing this incredibly unpleasant, 65-year-old misanthrope is approached in an alleyway by Evan Rachel Wood, who basically says, "Hello! I'm a hot young Southern runaway! Can I please move into your apartment?"

At this point, I really thought Woody Allen had lost it. I mean, when you put Larry David and Evan Rachel Wood together, that's not a movie romance; that's a porn site. "Whatever Works" is so thoroughly unbelievable, it's over-the-top.

But here's the thing: "Whatever Works" isn't meant to be realistic. It's more like Woody Allen gone kabuki, pushing his usual themes, motifs, and situations to an outrageous, burlesque extreme.

The Larry David character, a defrocked physics professor named Boris Yellnikov, is a fire-breathing highbrow crank who denounces everything, all the time. He makes the Larry David character on "Curb Your Enthusiasm" look like Gandhi. Here he's more like Howard Stern with heartburn. Yet once you get on his wavelength, there's something cathartic about listening to his rants.

After a while, Patricia Clarkson and Ed Begley Jr. show up as Wood's evangelical parents, and their conversion to New York's hedonistic ways happens so quickly that it's completely implausible and delightful.

Boris is a variation on the classic Woody Allen character, a moralist who keeps insisting that life has no meaning. But he's like Woody without apologies, without the guilt.

That's where Larry David has liberated Woody Allen. He's saying, "Sure, life is nasty, amoral, imperfect, disappointing. The glass is only half full. But that's okay... you should drink up anyway."