Pretentious People Drinking Wine in Manhattan
Melinda and Melinda is populated with self-absorbed, know-it-all characters who pepper their sentences with words like "Proust" and "sonata" and who reminisce about their days at Vassar. These are the kinds of people you roll your eyes at and would never be friends with in real life. So why did Woody Allen think we'd want to sit for 100 minutes and watch a movie about them? The premise is virtually impossible - two movies within a movie - one a comedy, the other a drama, both featuring the same central character. The script is pompous and swollen-headed, and the casting is atrocious. Aside from Radha Mitchell, who almost pulls off playing Melinda as both a tragic figure and a loopy New York City free spirit, the actors fail miserably. Chloe Sevigny can't overcome her gawky appearance and unpolished delivery enough to make us believe she's a well-educated arts patron. When she says the line, "I haven't been to a dark bistro since college," you want to laugh, even though it's supposed to be a serious moment.But it's Will Ferrell who turns in the worst performance (perhaps the worst of 2004) by attempting a Woody Allen impersonation. I can't believe there wasn't a point during the filming of this movie when Woody himself didn't think, "I gotta fire this guy and just play the role myself." In a particularly excruciating scene meant to be played for laughs, Ferrell babbles on a la Woody about hating the beaches of the Hamptons. It's not funny; just painful.
The other actors are wasted in their parts - Steve Carrell plays the sidekick role normally reserved for Tony Roberts in an Allen movie, and Amanda Peet is a big dud as the new Diane Keaton.
If it weren't for the different characters populating the worlds of the two Melindas, I wouldn't have known which story was supposed to be the funny one and which story was supposed to be serious. It didn't help that I really didn't give a damn about what happened to either of the Melindas, and I kept hoping that a homicidal character from one of Woody Allen's other films, like Crimes and Misdemeanors or Match Point, would show up and kill all the irritating people.
To top it all off, the movie's premise is framed by a gaggle of annoying artsy-fartsy types having dinner in a restaurant and discussing the merits of comedies versus dramas. Blech.
As with a lot of Woody Allen's films, the two story lines of Melinda and Melinda simply end with no real or satisfying resolutions. That normally frustrates me, but in this case, I was overjoyed, simply because I wanted the whole awful experience to be over for me. Thank God Woody redeemed himself with better films after this one; otherwise, I'd have had to write him off completely.
score 1/10
pfogertyca 24 March 2007
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1623464/35289
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