nanny theatrics

If my boss used words like "crepuscular" and "gadded" or "lampooned," I would probably write an exposé of him, too.

I found Woody Allen's short "Nanny Dearest" a little obnoxious. The style is striking, certainly, but it's pretentious just the same. That is, the vocabulary is highly pretentious. Allen also uses a lot of scientific jargon, adding to the pretense and distracting readers from the meat of the story.

Here is a list of the most magniloquent words I happened upon:

portent
vitriol
lampooned
crepuscular
ratiocinate
photon
truculent
ganglia
queried
truculent
strabismus
succubus
infractions
screed
concatenation
jackknifed

Really? Sure, these high style words add to the story and make Mr. B and family seem like priggish jerks, but it also gives one a headache to read. Allen's scientific or latin metaphors like "gadded about in my own pair of ventricles," "arrhythmic calisthenics," and "photon velocity" are obscure and forced. The latin lingo also sounds harsh and lacks alliteration.