Woody Allen’s been in a slow decline for a long time now. Most would say his last great comedy was Deconstructing Harry, way back in 1997. And that his last great drama was—depending on who you ask—Crimes and Misdemeanors in 1989, or possibly last year’s Match Point. For my money, Match Point was a brilliant and cynical update of Crimes, and a welcome return to form. The preview for Scoop seemed slight and sitcomy, but I was optimistic. Maybe one of the pivotal American directors of the last half-century was on his way back.

Turns out we should keep waiting. An exhaustingly perky young reporter named Sondra (Scarlett Johansson) is informed by the departed spirit of legendary journalist Joe Strombel (Ian McShane) that a British lord’s son (Hugh Jackman) may be a serial killer. She snoops around him with the assistance of a cheesy stage magician (Woody Allen, playing himself as always) and falls in love. The question lingers, is he or isn’t he? That and that alone is the weight of Scoop.

It’s a premise more befitting a half-hour TV show than a movie, like something you’d see on an extra-wacky episode of Sex and the City. The “murder mystery” isn’t much of one; circumstantial evidence shifts Sondra’s suspicions for and against the charming Peter Lymon. We know instinctively plot revelations will be handed to us, rather than earned or reasoned out.

The problem is that it’s a one-trick comedy routine. That one trick is Woody Allen himself, delivering asides in that inimicable fashion. It’s funny, but only for awhile; I felt like I was watching a stand-up act intruding on a completely routine comedy. Ian McShane, in his first major motion picture since his breakthrough performance as Al Swearengen in Deadwood, is criminally underutilized here. He is a walking talking McGuffin, meant only to feed the necessary lines to keep the story—and by extension the hijinx—going. Shame, that.

I am not sold on Scarlett Johansson. I am aware she’s very pretty. (Every article and interview written about her stresses this point to an uncomfortable degree.) She plays a convincing ingenue. But most any actor will tell you comedy is harder to pull off than drama. The sense of timing and surprise is exact, and it’s no coincidence that comedians make some of our best dramatic actors. If Scoop is any indication, Johansson doesn’t have the chops to make the jump from drama to comedy.

But weak material will breed weak performances, and a distinct sense of half-assery hangs over the proceedings. Twenty or thirty minutes in, the thought first enters your head: “Is this it?” One has to wonder if the cast and crew were asking themselves the same thing.