Whatever Works

Whatever Works (2009) is a Woody Allen comedy you can watch online on iFILM. Boris Yellnikoff is a former physicist and full-time grouch who long ago gave up on the human race. Larry David plays him with deadpan bite.

Then a runaway named Melody turns up on the doorstep of his cramped New York apartment — broke, sweet and clueless, straight off a bus from the South. Boris lets her crash for a night, lectures her endlessly, and somehow ends up married to her. Evan Rachel Wood gives Melody a light, easy charm. Soon her churchgoing mother arrives to drag her home, the father follows, and every visitor cracks open to reveal a side nobody saw coming.

Allen built the film from a script he first wrote back in the 1970s and handed it to one of his era's sharpest comic voices. Patricia Clarkson, Michael McKean and a very young Henry Cavill round out the cast. What lands is a small, funny argument that love is mostly luck, and you grab whatever works. Stream Whatever Works (2009) online on iFILM.