Woody Allen's Latest Offers More of the Same
Writer and director Woody Allen presents another example of New Yorker neuroticism with Melinda and Melinda, a two-track abstract with no particular purpose. Featuring Vilmos Zsigmond's photography, a couple of good performances and a mercifully brisk pace, this movie, like Mr. Allen's previous works, depicts the white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) and Jewish east coast intellectuals next door.
The story starts with two men arguing whether life is essentially tragic or comic. It's Woody Allen's movie, so happy is not an option. Both men take the same situation and construct their cases using the same fictitious figure, Melinda, who is played in each scenario by Radha Mitchell (Johnny Depp's wife in Finding Neverland). Here, Mitchell evokes Mr. Allen's notorious ex-wife, Mia Farrow, in Rosemary's Baby; thin, fried and ready to blow like Mt. St. Helens.
Imposing mentally unstable Melinda on two, separate stories holds interest for about an hour, at which point the stories emerge as less involving than one would suppose—like a stranger's cell phone conversation in line at Starbucks. The comic tale stars Will Ferrell as an insecure actor married to movie director Amanda Peet. Their marital problems are magnified by neighbor Melinda's needy presence. Peet matches Melinda to hunky Josh Brolin, and the couples double date, with Brolin as the WASP foil to Ferrell's kvetching swine. It is funny, but, of course, Mr. Allen is more interested in exploiting eccentricities than in making the audience laugh and, before long, it's back to watching Ferrell merely act out Mr. Allen's lines.
The tragic plot involves the movie's most consistent character, an Upper East Side pianist played by Chloe Sevigny. She is married to an insecure actor (Jonny Lee Miller), and Melinda is her college pal and, in the dramatic scenario, something of a pet project. A classical pianist named Ellis (charismatic Chiwetel Ejiofor) sweeps both Melinda and Sevigny's neglected wife off their feet in the movie's most logical and rewarding plot resolution. But, Sevigny's husband is too easy to hate—his transformation into a jerk is an abrupt departure from his earlier characterization—and Ejiofor's piano player is too good to be true.
The comic track lacks humor while the tragic track lacks pathos. Neither offers enough contrast—which makes Melinda and Melinda a thin, if marginally interesting, assignment and aging Mr. Allen a prisoner of his own provincialism, so immersed in eastern intellectual society that his most appealing character, Ellis, the handsome and worldly pianist, apparently does not know how to use a search engine.
For his first Woody Allen movie, Mr. Zsigmond (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) uses fall colors and subtle changes in angles for showing the parallel stories. It does not alleviate the sameness—only Sevigny accomplishes that—of these twin tales, which, with rambling characters schlepping around a New York City that seems too quiet, drained and lifeless, are equally bland.
The story starts with two men arguing whether life is essentially tragic or comic. It's Woody Allen's movie, so happy is not an option. Both men take the same situation and construct their cases using the same fictitious figure, Melinda, who is played in each scenario by Radha Mitchell (Johnny Depp's wife in Finding Neverland). Here, Mitchell evokes Mr. Allen's notorious ex-wife, Mia Farrow, in Rosemary's Baby; thin, fried and ready to blow like Mt. St. Helens.
Imposing mentally unstable Melinda on two, separate stories holds interest for about an hour, at which point the stories emerge as less involving than one would suppose—like a stranger's cell phone conversation in line at Starbucks. The comic tale stars Will Ferrell as an insecure actor married to movie director Amanda Peet. Their marital problems are magnified by neighbor Melinda's needy presence. Peet matches Melinda to hunky Josh Brolin, and the couples double date, with Brolin as the WASP foil to Ferrell's kvetching swine. It is funny, but, of course, Mr. Allen is more interested in exploiting eccentricities than in making the audience laugh and, before long, it's back to watching Ferrell merely act out Mr. Allen's lines.
The tragic plot involves the movie's most consistent character, an Upper East Side pianist played by Chloe Sevigny. She is married to an insecure actor (Jonny Lee Miller), and Melinda is her college pal and, in the dramatic scenario, something of a pet project. A classical pianist named Ellis (charismatic Chiwetel Ejiofor) sweeps both Melinda and Sevigny's neglected wife off their feet in the movie's most logical and rewarding plot resolution. But, Sevigny's husband is too easy to hate—his transformation into a jerk is an abrupt departure from his earlier characterization—and Ejiofor's piano player is too good to be true.
The comic track lacks humor while the tragic track lacks pathos. Neither offers enough contrast—which makes Melinda and Melinda a thin, if marginally interesting, assignment and aging Mr. Allen a prisoner of his own provincialism, so immersed in eastern intellectual society that his most appealing character, Ellis, the handsome and worldly pianist, apparently does not know how to use a search engine.
For his first Woody Allen movie, Mr. Zsigmond (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) uses fall colors and subtle changes in angles for showing the parallel stories. It does not alleviate the sameness—only Sevigny accomplishes that—of these twin tales, which, with rambling characters schlepping around a New York City that seems too quiet, drained and lifeless, are equally bland.
