D.C. MOVIE GUYS

Melinda and Melinda
Directed by Woody Allen
Inflicted on select audiences nationwide beginning 3/23/2005
1 *
It would be nice to report that Woody Allen has ceased his career-damning tailspin and that his latest feature, Melinda and Melinda was a return to the better days of yesteryear. However, we live in the real world where Melinda and Melinda is a tedious piece of crud lending additional credence to the suspicion that a man who was once arguably one of the greatest writer-directors of all time is now clearly incapable of producing even watchable entertainment. It may not be Curse of the Jade Scorpion bad, but it can certainly stand on the next step up the ladder with Hollywood Ending and Anything Else.
I take no pleasure in any slam; I wish all movies were great. However, I take particular displeasure in the relentlessly expanding pile of dog waste that has become Mr. Allen’s contemporary filmography in that it is such an astounding reversal. Using the springboard of a pair of Oscars for Annie Hall (1977), Mr. Allen enjoyed a ten-year period from 1979-1989 in which he created such movies as Manhattan, Zelig, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Alice, and (my personal choice for “greatest film ever made”) Crimes and Misdemeanors. But with the new decade came the break-up of his long-standing relationship with Mia Farrow (her acting in his movies was one of the prime assets of the above list) and more startlingly, the news that he had been having an affair with his underage stepdaughter. With the ensuing acrimony came even more bizarre allegations that Mr. Allen had committed incest with his and Ms. Farrow’s children and finally his marriage to the underage stepdaughter. The whole Springeresque display was quite ironic behavior from someone who once preached sexual morality and honorable behavior to Michael Murphy in Manhattan. More lately, Mr. Allen (whose films are notoriously bad investments) sued a producer (who had essentially rescued him and was subsidizing his lifestyle) over his not receiving the nonexistent profits from the recent crop of crap.
But enough of this let us dismiss the matter at hand. Thankfully, Woody does not appear in this movie (save a “was that him” glimpse at the beginning). The insufferable conceit of Melinda and Melinda is that two playwrights at a New York restaurant will take turns spinning out a yarn from a common starting point, one as farce and one as melodrama (Wallace Shawn and Larry Pine in “My Dinner with Woody”). The common element is Radha Mitchell as the titular Melinda who shows up uninvited at a dinner party. Luckily, the two playwrights tell us which the comedic version is since there are none of the usual indicators (i.e. laughs) to clue the audience in.
The serious Melinda story is about an old friend who arrives late (very late, she had asked to stay over several months before and had never shown without either call or explanation) and immediately disrupts the dinner party of a bunch of young Manhattan urbanites including Chloe Sevigny and Brooke Smith (like Mr. Allen’s comedic abilities, too little seen here). Acts of adultery ensue and lives are casually broken apart as Melinda serves as the catalyst for overdue change. The supposedly funny version of the story has Melinda becoming the extra woman so that when a round of marital musical chairs has aspiring filmmaker Amanda Peet end up prostituting herself with her new executive producer, hack actor hubby (Will Ferrell) can end up with Melinda whom he is now smitten with. That Woody Allen sees anything engrossing or compelling in the lives of these pathetic wretches may be the best indication of how much his talent has eroded. The sort of Big Apple stereotypes that once would have provided the fodder for clever putdown sequences are now the protagonists.
But worse than Mr. Allen’s moral degeneracy either on screen or off is something that I would not even thought him capable of a decade ago: Woody Allen seems unable to simply tell a joke, or at least one that will elicit a laugh. After watching Curse of the Jade Scorpion, I likened the experience to watching someone who had suffered a severe stroke struggle over even the simplest words. The new Woody Allen is possessed not of wit, timing, or even the most rudimentary ability to work with actors. The once charming quality of having the main characters sound as if they were channeling Woody Allen (Mia Farrow’s work was the best example of this, but think of Max Von Sydow’s rants in Hannah and Her Sisters), now simply reinforces the suspicion that Woody has nothing left to say. For all of these reasons, the jumping back and forth between the two stories would have been intriguing if it had been anything other than a tiresome gimmick.
I am not a big believer in karma (look at Hitler if you need any greater disproving), but certainly character does emerge—even if it takes a while. Someone who was once ready to stand in the pantheon as one of the great filmmakers in cinema history now seems capable only of inane and diminished reflections of past glory. No greater fall from artistic grace comes to mind. It is a pity that we moviegoers are the ones that are forced to endure this sorry spectacle.
–Bill Henry

Related Reading:

Pride and Prejudice: Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack

The Film Encyclopedia 6e: The Complete Guide to Film and the Film Industry

Why Popcorn Costs So Much at the Movies: And Other Pricing Puzzles

If You Take a Mouse to the Movies (Book & Cassette)

Looking at Movies: An Introduction to Film, Second Edition ( Set with DVD)