Starring: Radha Mitchell, Will Ferrell, Amanda Peet
Director: Woody Allen
Rated: M15+
WOODY Allen has fallen on hard critical times in recent years, some of his films barely getting a cinema release.
He is criticised for being too narrow in his focus on affluent, articulate New Yorkers suffering from angst, and for his wit seeming to dry up.
Certainly, his films of the last five years or so do not make the impact that earlier films did.
Best to say that Melinda and Melinda is about average.
As always, he is served by a strong cast. As always, there is a neurotic Woody Allen or Woody Allen substitute. This time it is Will Ferrell who does a pretty good Allen impersonation (except that he is twice the size of Woody).
As always, there are conversations peppered with one-liners about the woes of the human condition.
Four people sit in a restaurant, a writer of serious drama and a writer of comedies. They discuss what it is that makes tragedy tragic and comedy comic.
And it is all illustrated by a character called Melinda who appears in two stories with variations on the same situations.
In one she is depressed, in the other she is lighthearted. She comes to New York and stays with friends. Their marriages are in trouble. She falls in love. They all have to sort things out.
Which is funny? Which is tragic?
This is not the most profound of Woody Allen’s films. The character’s lives exist on a fairly superficial level.
What carries the film through are the performances rather than the dialogue. Radha Mitchell does very well as Melinda and Melinda. Others in the cast include Amanda Peet, Chloe Sevigny, Jonny Lee Miller and Chiwitel Ejiofor.
We will just have to wait for his next film.
