Home Page      Genres       Melinda and Melinda Review by Dan Pearson for Reel Movie Critic H H ½ Cast Radha Mitchell Melinda Will Ferrell Hobie Chloe Sevigny Laurel Amanda Peet Susan Directed by Woody Allen. A comedy and a drama. Rated PG-13 (for adult situations involving sexuality and some substance material). Fox Searchlight Pictures. Running time: 99 minutes. "Life has a malicious way of dealing with great potential." That’s a prescient line from "Melinda and Melinda," the latest film from the filmmaker born Allen Stewart Konigsberg in 1935. Better known to the world as Woody Allen, this professionally neurotic Brooklyn native has made some of the world’s funniest comedies and some of the cinema’s most pretentious dramas. His current release falls somewhere in between, as it embraces the playful premise of employing elements from both camps duking it out in the same movie. Since 1965, the prolific Allen has directed 35 motion pictures, written 38 screenplays and appeared on screen in 38 films. He has been nominated for Academy Awards six times for best director, 13 times for best original screenplay and once for acting in "Annie Hall." He received Oscars for directing, writing and starring in "Annie Hall, and for writing ‘Hannah and Her Sisters." Come awards season, "Melinda and Melinda" is not likely to be adding to those stats. But, at least, it demonstrates far less creative desperation and considerably more basic entertainment that has been evident on screen in such recent under-whelming Allen efforts as "Deconstructing Harry," "Small Time Crooks," The Curse of the Jade Scorpion," Hollywood Ending" and "Anything Else." At the start of "Melinda and Melinda" four friends meet for dinner at a posh New York restaurant. The quartet includes a sparring pair of notable playwrights played by Wallace Shawn and Larry Pine. An anecdote concerning a distraught woman who shows up unannounced at a Manhattan dinner party spawns opposing hypotheses. While Pine’s character Max sees the tragic potential of such a scenario, Shawn’s character Sy sees the inherent humor in the situation, and each decides to substantially expand the story along their own lines of thinking. What emerges is an intentionally schizophrenic film where the artificial realities of either position eventually begin to blur.

The connecting link is the enigmatic character of Melinda who appears in each scenario, portrayed by Radha Mitchell, a formidable Australian actress whose credits run the gamut from "Pitch Black" to "Finding Neverland."

For those trying to keep the stories straight, Mitchell sports different hairstyles¾ a messy curly bob for the drama and short, straight and sassy cut for the comedy. The essential facts of her traumatized state in either instance points to a failed marriage in the Midwest to a doctor, resulting in loss of custody of her children.

In the dramatic portions Melinda seeks out her old college chum Laurel (Chloe Sevigny), a rather colorless, well-bred sort married to Lee (Johnny Lee Miller), a struggling and adulterous actor. Their attempts to set her up with eligible men, and get her out of their loft apartment in SoHo, pays off at another dinner party where Melinda strikes up a conversation with too-good-to-be-true Harlem jazz pianist and composer Ellis Moonsong (Chiwetel Ejiofor). Unfortunately for Melinda, Laurel also sees the potential for Ellis brightening her life as well.

The more amiable comedic counterpart takes place in an Upper East Side townhouse. Here hapless actor and hopeless husband Hobie (Will Ferrell) and his swimming-with-sharks, would-be film director wife Susan (Amanda Peet) are hosting a dinner party to raise the millions needed to launch her controversial independent project, "The Castration Sonata." Enter Melinda, a lost and beautiful stranger from just down the hall who has taken an overdose of pills. Yes, that’s how the "comedy" starts.

While his signature black-rimmed eyeglasses do make a cameo on the movie poster, Allen doesn’t physically appear in "Melinda and Melinda," choosing instead to again have another actor mouth his lines and adopt his screen persona.

Previous Woody surrogates have included Mia Farrow, who was excellent in ‘The Purple Rose of Cairo," and John Cusack, who was adequate in "Bullets Over Broadway." Far less positive impersonations of the Woodman include Kenneth Branagh in "Celebrity" and Jason Biggs in "Anything Else."

This time around the burden of being Woody falls on the tall, blonde, WASPy Farrell, who thankfully finds his own very funny voice while dutifully performing Woody’s own inflections to many of his one-liners.

Also making themselves known in sharp supporting roles are Josh Brolin as a rich handsome dentist with a place in the Hamptons, who expresses an interest in Melinda, Brooke Smith as Melinda’s other college friend from Northwestern and Vinessa Shaw as a Republican sex maniac.

The philosophical debate in "Melinda and Melinda" eventually takes a backseat to soap opera and simplistic observation but shrewd casting and superb production values should keep audiences in their seats.