Melinda and Melinda

 

Picture: B     Sound: C+     Extras: D     Film: C+

 

 

You’ve got to give Woody Allen credit; he’s at least trying some interesting things with his latter works.

 

Wait. Let’s start over.

 

Woody Allen’s movies have grown increasingly lackluster despite admirable ambitions.

 

No, that doesn’t really capture it, either.

 

The films of Woody Allen have come to resemble the works of a director that looks like he’s hung around too long, scraping the bottom of the folder marked “IDEAS ‘79” for inspiration for recent additions to his oeuvre.

 

That should do it.

 

It’s almost impossible to quantify the impact Allen has had on cinema, be it as a comedy writer or director.  His seminal works, Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Crimes and Misdemeanors among them, stand as some of the best work ever committed to celluloid.

 

Yet, Allen’s role in the short-term, modern grand scheme of things vis-à-vis box office success and creativity has been that of relative innocuousness.  His last five films, Small Time Crooks, Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Hollywood Ending, and Anything Else, are notable for their throwback feel and, at least in the case of Hollywood Ending, abundance of quality comedy and one-liners.

 

Melinda and Melinda, Allen’s most recent work, is a valiant attempt by the caustic auteur, but is, once again, a fall-flat effort.

 

To the film’s credit, though, it’s set up on an interesting premise: two directors of theatre, one a comedy director the other a dramatist, are sitting at a restaurant with a couple other people.  The topic of conversation is which genre is more worthwhile and which is more indicative of the human condition.  One member of the group begins relating a story told to them by someone else to help settle the debate.  Unfortunately, each of the directors seizes upon the story as one that would be a classic human comedy or a tragic drama.  And as they begin to unfurl their stories, each revolving around a woman named Melinda (Radha Mitchell, best known for Joel Schumacher’s Phone Booth with Colin Farrell) crashing a dinner party.

 

Even though this happens something like five minutes into the film and sets it into motion, the set-up also precipitates its downfall.

 

The drama half of Melinda and Melinda is where we’re led first.  The gist of this Melinda’s story is that she’s a trainwreck suicidal divorcee/murderess who is being denied visitation rights by her ex-husband, a rich doctor with pull among local judges and politicians.  When she walks in on a dinner party hosted by Laurel (Chloe Sevigny) and Lee (Jonny Lee Miller) in an attempt to land Lee a coveted role in an upcoming play, old friendships are rekindled.  But when Laurel, along with Cassie (Brooke Smith), try to set Melinda up at a party, Melinda meets piano player and genuine smoothie Ellis (Chiwetel Ejiofor), falls instantly for him, and exacerbates the sub-drama between Laurel and her cheatin’ man, Lee.

 

On the comedy side, Melinda is a cute-as-a-button space-cadet, not unlike Diane Keaton in Annie Hall.  When she walks into the dinner party, this time being hosted by Susan (Amanda Peet) and Hobie (Will Ferrell), she’s looking for help since she inadvertently took a bunch of sleeping pills.  She quickly falls in with Susan and Hobie, and Hobie, distressed about not getting enough sex from his career-driven director wife Susan, falls quickly for Melinda.  Hijinks ensue.

 

See, the problem with Melinda and Melinda is that the two halves of the story are both equally warranting of full-blown screen treatment.  When we get only bits and pieces of one of the stories while being tossed head first into the plot of the other, it’s rather difficult to become invested in any of the characters or situations.  But even though that is the case, the comedy half is much easier to go with. Ferrell is a serviceable cipher for the typical Allen persona, and Mitchell is a great stand-in for the Diane Keaton-esque female characters Allen populates his comedies with.  If only we had more time with Melinda and Hobie, something great might have come from the film.  The flipside, though, is that the drama half is awful; just abysmal.  And a great deal of blame for this can be levied towards the fractured state of the film itself.

 

What ultimately ends up happening, though, is that you start paying less attention to what is happening on screen and more to how that action and those scenarios are reminiscent of Allen’s previous works.  Astute observers will notice parallels to Crimes and Misdemeanors, Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, and likely numerous other Allen films.  Perhaps this is deliberate. Maybe the two directors who are “telling” these stories are very well versed in the Woody Allen filmography.  But that doesn’t make selling the film out to old glories an admirable endeavor.

 

Melinda and Melinda arrives on DVD in a one-disc package that features both the anamorphic enhanced 1.85 X 1 widescreen presentation as well as a lesser full-screen version.  On the widescreen front, the film looks great with hardly a blemish to be found.  The colors of the comedy side of the film pop and the dark, flatness of the drama half of the movie is represented beautifully.  The pan & scan version just cannot compete in the definition department.

 

Sonically, it’s an Allen film, so all that matters is that we can hear the punchy, tough dialogue coming out of the actors’ mouths.  We can, and they sound great, despite the fact that this is a very rare DVD for Fox as it is released in Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono.  The company usually does 2.0 Mono, but 1.0 here for whatever reason.  Allen is the only major filmmaker still recording in monophonic sound all the time.  The actors would sound good on VHS, but that’s sort of beside the point.  Allen’s films are accentuated wonderfully on DVD, thanks to the format’s promise of strong audio quality, and Melinda and Melinda can be added to the list of aurally pleasing Woody Allen film available on DVD.

 

On the extras side, there’s nothing. There isn’t even a trailer.  How disappointing.

 

Melinda and Melinda leaves a bittersweet taste when it concludes.  On one hand, the comedy is satisfying.  On the other, the drama is a wreck.  Good performances abound, but even they can’t save the film.  What can, though, is the promise that Allen’s next film, Match Point is a return to form for the one-time master of American cinema.  Let’s hope that’s the case, because Melinda and Melinda sure ain’t lighting things up.

 

 

-   Dante A. Ciampaglia