Ever since Woody Allen got caught sleeping with his step-daughter, critics have been extra harsh about his work, some of them even going so far as to complain that his elegant black-and-white title sequences were boring and old-hat (and what do the titles have to do with anything, anyway?) Well the nitpickers will be disappointed by The Curse of the Jade Dragon, because those white-on-black titles are still there. However, if they stay beyond the title sequence they will be in for a light-hearted and occasionally quite funny romp that hearkens back to the classic screwball comedies of Howard Hawks, with just a dash of film noir thrown in for good measure.

In an effective if blatant homage to the hectic newsroom scene that kicks off Hawk's His Girl Friday, Jade Dragon opens with a blast of movement and energy, as we are deposited into the very busy offices of Northcoast Insurance, circa 1940. Ace insurance investigator C.W. Briggs (Allen) having just cracked another case, is cracking wise with his shapely secretary (Showgirls' Elizabeth Berkley). Until, that is, he discovers that his files have been moved by Betty Ann Fitzgerald (Helen Hunt), the new "efficiency expert" hired by boss Chris Magruder (Dan Aykroyd), who also happens to be her lover. Briggs and Fitzgerald are like oil and water-in fact, that they can't stand each other (at one point Allen's Briggs tries to allay Fitzgerald's fears about his dirty apartment by saying, "Don't worry-germs can't live in your blood... It's too cold...").

Whilst attending a nightclub performance with their fellow employees Briggs and Fitzgerald are hypnotized by the Great Voltan (David Ogden Stiers). Under his spell they are made to play passionate lovers. Voltan brings them out of their respective trances but later that night phones Briggs, utters the trigger word and has Briggs under his spell once again. Why? To steal jewels, of course. Given that Briggs was the man responsible for overseeing the installation of security devices for the rich people Northcoast insures, who better to sidestep the burglar alarms and spirit away millions in diamonds? Which he promptly does, waking up the next morning with no memory of his actions.

Sure the hypnotism angle is a hoary B-movie cliché, but it's an easy enough one to forgive, as it serves a dual comic purpose. Early in the movie Briggs remarks, "I'm so good, I'd hate be chased by me" and that is exactly what happens when he is assigned to investigate the theft. And it provides many more comic possibilities in that whenever Voltan puts Briggs or Fitzgerald under his command (yes, she, too, figures in his nefarious scheme), this bile-spewing couple are back in love with each other...

Allen is smart enough to know that it is inherently funny to cast himself in what would have been the role played by Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart back in the forties. Some may find it ludicrous that a gorgeous woman like Charlize Theron (playing the Carmen Sternwood role from The Big Sleep-the hard-drinking, promiscuous rich kid) would throw herself at Woody's nebbishy investigator, but in comedic terms it works. I couldn't help but chuckle when the kind of hard-bitten, world-weary tough talk that would generally come out of the mouth of a Bogart, issued forth from the diminutive Allen.

Helen Hunt more than holds her own in the Rosalind Russell role. Tough and shrill to begin with, she warms up over the course of the movie, proving that she can hold her own with the boys while retaining her feminine charms. And even though the plot does get a bit thin about two-thirds of the way through, the shenanigans that Hunt and Allen get up to compensate for it. The Curse of the Jade Dragon may not be great art but it's a more than decent entertainment.