Directed by:
Woody AllenScreenplay:
Woody AllenCinematography:
Vilmos ZsigmondCast:
Will Ferrell, Neil Pepe, Stephanie Roth Haberle, Radha Mitchell, Chloë Sevigny, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Josh Brolin, Jonny Lee Miller, Wallace Shawn, Larry Pine (more)Plots(1)
The same story, more or less, told two different ways — as serious drama and as comedy. Though the drama lacks emotional intensity and the comedy lacks funny jokes, Woody Allen interweaves them deftly enough and provides some of the members of his large cast with opportunities to do some crisp, old-fashioned stage-style acting. The link between the two tales is Radha Mitchell, who plays Melinda in both — an unhappy woman who throws the romantic, professional and social lives of a group of articulate Manhattanites into mild turmoil. In the tragedy, she chain-smokes and fidgets, while in the comedy she has an ingenue's golden glow. Some of the actors fare better than others — Chloë Sevigny and Chiwetel Ejiofor seem best suited for Mr. Allen's anti-naturalistic approach to acting, while Will Ferrell's shambling geniality make him a poor choice for the inevitable role of Woody Allen surrogate. In any case, the movie is most powerful as an extended piece of real estate pornography, depicting a seductive fantasy New York (though filmed in the real one) where struggling filmmakers and out-of-work actors live in fabulous lofts and labyrinthine prewar apartments. (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (4)
Of the twenty-nine Woody Allen films I've seen so far, Melinda and Melinda is definitely the weakest. It drags on, and the idea of a comedy and a drama would really be better conceived as a dual telling of the same thing rather than two different stories with the same central character, and the only thing keeping it all afloat is Will Ferrell, for whom Allen wrote his best. Yes, I enjoyed the roles of Steve Carell, Amanda Peet and Josh Brolin, but... But I've never been this bored with Woody Allen before. Not even with Interiors.
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I self-critically admit that the smooth-talking Jew got me again and his relationship conversation film satisfied me much more than most of his films I've recently watched, perhaps with the exception of Vicky Cristina Barcelona. This film seems more interesting and likable to me than, for example, Anything Else, Scoop, or Shadows and Fog. It is part of a group of films where the director experiments, and just as he experimented with atmosphere in Shadows and Fog, here he plays with genre fundamentals and confronts approaches applied in the comedy and tragedy genres. His Melindas are not identical women and their stories do not feature identical characters, only the initial model situation is the same. While the "tragic" Melinda is a typical hysteric, and as such, she leaves behind only fires and ruins due to her unrealistic ideas about love relationships and is doomed to constant failures in building relationships with those around her, her comedic counterpart is significantly more likable and realistic. Because they are not identical stories, the film is more interesting from a narrative perspective as well. The charming Australian Radha Mitchell also significantly contributes to the film earning a fourth star. Her dual role is one of the greatest acting opportunities in her career so far. Overall impression: 75%.
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My next meeting with Woody Allen, whom I neglected for many years. I don't know if it was intentional, but I definitely managed to do it quite well. After a relatively new film like "Midnight in Paris," I looked back a little into the past, but not by that much. "Melinda and Melinda" is a film that definitely belongs to Allen's more recent work, which, among other things, is characterized by the fact that the creator himself hardly acts in it anymore. "Melinda and Melinda" is exactly that case. It is a film about human relationships and how individuals interfere in each other's lives. The film is quite innovative. In reality, we follow small groups of people in a restaurant who talk about how a story can look. There are two writers, and each has a different opinion on the story. One sees it as a comedy, the other as a tragedy. And so we watch how the story develops. One comically, the other tragically. It is as if Allen had an idea in his head that was not fully developed, and so he tried it out with real actors and made a recording of it. The story is incomplete, collecting various ideas and perspectives. Although Woody Allen tried a slightly different approach, it simply didn't work out in this case. Woody Allen said that he has ideas that he will never have time to realize in his lifetime. If he had tried a different one of those ideas instead of "Melinda and Melinda," I think he would have enriched cinema by something more. There are funny scenes, there are dramatic scenes, but there is no cohesive element that puts it together in a decent way. More: http://www.filmovy-denik.cz/2012/10/prach-uspesna-pokracovani-animaku.html
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In life, you can't just rub a lamp and make a wish. Screenwriters are people who can do whatever they want with the audience. And using this fact as his basis, Woody Allen creates two sub-personalities at the beginning of the film that characterize him. After all, he can turn a single subject into a very personal and unsettling drama (unrequited relationships are much warmer than dreamy ones), as well as a romantic comedy full of nervous remarks and confused realizations. In this case, Will Ferrell is a very faithful copy of Allen's younger film self, and his verbal machine gun fits perfectly with the usual discrediting of unwanted competitors. It just proves that the Master has learned that it is not necessary to cast respected theater or lesser-known but more valuable actors, and that when he discovers talent in purely commercial performers, it turns out even fresher.
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