From the very beginning to the very end of The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, with the exception of production design, everything feels like a half-hearted, half-baked, uninspired mediocrity.  Even the part of production design that involves locations seemed off.   We saw a Manhattan that looked, for the first time in Allen’s career, like it could have been a Canadian location… lots of building close-ups, not a lot of scenic shooting.  Director of Photography, Zhao Fei, who did a beautiful job on Small Time Crooks, his first film with Allen, seemed to have been trying to light sections of the film like a TV show, all high intensity light from above.  Not only was this lighting enough to make Helen Hunt almost old enough to be involved with Woody Allen, it removed all the caramel beauty that we have been used to in Allen’s films.