‘Café Society’ is a pleasant and entertaining trip to nowhere

Perhaps the idea of having an older voice narrate the story was to create the quality of a recollection, but at this point a retrospective vibe comes built in to Allen’s work and needs no emphasizing.

At 80, Allen’s voice lacks the flexibility it once had, and so his narration is stiff and hardly evocative of an earlier era’s romance.

His uncle Phil (Carell), a big shot agent, gives Bobby an entry-level job in his agency, whereupon the younger man falls in love with his uncle’s secretary, Veronica (Kristen Stewart).

“Café Society” is the story of a young man’s education in life and love, and though a timeline isn’t specified, it seems to take place over the course of about three years, starting in 1936.

(We know it’s 1936 because “Swing Time” and “Libeled Lady” are playing in movie theaters.) Eisenberg’s role is one Allen might have played years ago, but unlike in the case of John Cusack (“Bullets Over Broadway”) and Owen Wilson (“Midnight in Paris”), Allen chooses a surrogate less appealing than his younger self.

[...] “Café Society” is not intended as a grotesque fantasy, or meant to suggest that its writer-director is delusional.

Allen is confident that he can skip scenes, shift locations and more or less take his audience anywhere he wants, so long as he’s entertaining, and in this he’s right.

[...] we have digressions into the gangster life of Bobby’s brother (Corey Stoll), which are mostly comic, and interludes with Bobby’s parents (Jeannie Berlin and Ken Stott).

The film’s cinematographer is Vittorio Storaro (“The Last Emperor,” “Last Tango in Paris,” “Apocalypse Now”), who evokes the past in a way that looks like reality dipped in memory, just a little more rich and clear than it ever could have been.