For all of its borrowings from silent film and Keystone Kops harum scarum, Allen's art is often very private and parochial, emerging paradoxically out of a clearly-defined cultural context. What Allen has done then is to blend the autobiographical elements that form so great a portion of his comedy with the more accessible allusions to mass culture, the result being an engaging amalgam of parody and confession, satire and sentiment, hostility and affection.

Consider Allen's use of his Jewish middle-class origins. In three of his films we hear voices of what obviously are a New York Jewish middle-aged couple nagging and whining about their son. (pp. 51-2)

I suspect it is no accident that we never see the faces of Allen's parents, that we merely hear their nagging voices, their pained disappointment over their son's failures. Allen's portrait of them is devastating, but stops short of being malicious or cruel. Perhaps it is enough that the college drop-out has had the last word! Allen's reference to his Jewishness extends beyond these parental allusions. He seems fascinated—almost obsessed—by the rabbinate and appears to delight in mocking the solemnity and dignity of the rabbinical image. (p. 52)

[Though Allen comes] close to offensive caricature in [his] broad treatment of recognizable Jewish types, [he is] at the same time asserting the freedom to employ such ethnic material in non-ethnic situations. The Jewish comic may be exorcising personal dybukks through these routines, striking back against a Jewish background that may have been unfulfilling and restricting. Yet at the same time these comic bits are a joke on the gentiles who don't quite get the point. (p. 53)

Allen is not always on target in blending the obvious and the bizarre. At times his nervous imagination causes him to move too quickly from one bit to another, neglecting the careful rhythms that structure comic genius. The courtroom sequence in Bananas—a segment with some of his zaniest moments—is cut short before its comic possibilities have been exhausted. (This is the scene in which a large black woman, in taking the stand in the Federal government's loyalty case against Allen gives her name as J. Edgar Hoover.) His films tend to have a disjointed effect, with transitions missing and pieces dangling…. His films suffer from the absence of comic foils, for when his own inventiveness lags, there is no one else on screen to pick up the ball. Finally, the latter portions of the films inevitably are a let-down after the early hilarity. (pp. 56-7)