From I Daniel Blake to Cafe Society may seem a long way, but there are similarities ... Primarily that Loach and Allen are filmmakers with long resumes, and both turned 80 this year.
That's about where the resemblance stops, though. Allen has been massively uneven most of this millennium, with his dialogue increasingly feeling tired and like nothing any human has ever said, with the talented cast and crew doing their best to prop up an uninspired story that meanders and never really comes to a satisfactory conclusion. As a comedy it's not funny enough, and as a study of morality it's not penetrating enough. It's a well-decorated piece of nothing that means you're left to concentrate on the set-dressing and period costumes all too frequently. While there is theoretically a certain amount of plot going on screen (as Jesse Eisenberg's young Woody-surrogate visits LA to seek his fortune, is taken under the wing of his uncle, Steve Carell, and finds romance with his uncle's secretary, Kirsten Stewart), we're never really emotionally drawn in by any of this - Stewart is doing quite a lot of good work but still, it's difficult to accept she's particularly drawn to the dull, plodding, navel-gazing Eisenberg (as he's rather charmless, despite regular dialogue insistence that he's somehow very charming).
It does still have all the externals of a Woody Allen movie - the credits, the music, even the narration is by Allen. But there's nothing going on inside this, nothing compelling to tie the film together, apart from nice decor and cinematography. So it's a rather big miss.
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