Anyone shunning Woody Allen’s artistic output will be depriving themselves of a bittersweet comedy peppered with splendid performances if they give A Rainy Day In New York a pass.

The film’s skittishness is particularly maddening considering that Woody Allen has nothing to artistically to prove.

Not great, not hilarious, but not terrible or awful either.

Merely a watchable rehashing of his preferential themes and plot points, set in a present-day Manhattan so nostalgic and unreal it might as well be a period piece.

For all its stodgy touches, the film itself is like a cast-in-amber relic of the not-so-distant past.

This is like an over-chewed piece of gum: flavourless.

A Rainy Day In New York hits all of Allen’s touchstones, has a few good one-liners and is well played, but it sorely lacks the wit, vitality and veracity of his ’70s/’80s heyday.

Characters and storylines appear to have been chosen at random by a Woody Allen meme generator.

It is a retread of territory Allen has extensively covered before, but while the same can be said about almost all of his late-career work, seldom have the gears ground quite so loudly, and never before has the writing felt this chronically out-of-phase with the era it depicts.

This is a bad movie, with maybe two good jokes and some of Allen’s clunkiest direction.