Woody Allen’s Melinda and Melinda has an interesting concept set up by a conversation between Wallace Shawn and Larry Pine (playing playwrights) in a restaurant. Is life essentially tragic or comic? They challenge each other to imagine both a comic and a tragic story about a neurotic, suicidal young woman.
Radha Mitchell plays Melinda in both stories that have similar set-ups, but one is a serious drama and the other a romantic screwball comedy. The supporting casts in the stories are different and we switch back and forth between them. The serious drama is a well-acted but dull soap-opera. The comedy is better but not particularly fresh or inspired. Woody is NOT in the film and it’s Will Ferrell who does a good job of taking on the familiar Allen character in the comedic story. In a few scenes he’s not convincing, but in most it works, particularly when he’s allowed to be more Ferrell than Allen. He is fairly subdued until the last 20 minutes.
In the tragic version, Melinda (Mitchell) just released from a mental institution shows up at a dinner party of her college friend (Chloe Sevigny). She’s married to an alcoholic (played by Elementary’s Johnny Lee Miller). Melinda falls for a musician (Chiewetel Ejiofor) but her married friend likes him too.
The comedy focuses on the unhappy marriage of actor Hobie (Ferrell) and indie-filmmaker feminist Susan (Amanda Peet), whose dinner party is interrupted by their neurotic downstairs neighbor Melinda. Hobie is attracted to Melinda who is attracted to a musician.
Josh Brolin and Steve Carell are also in the cast.
Although only 99 minutes long, the drama sequences drag early on (suffering from Allen’s usual lack of narrative thrust problems) and the comedic ones don’t really come alive until the last 30 minutes. Mitchel’s been set up to deliver a tour de force sort of performance but she’s fairly bland (though good) in her dual roles. Some of the dialogue is stilted forcing mannered performances which mean we remain uninvolved with any of the characters. We get some laughs in the comic section however.
Melinda and Melinda is an admiral attempt by Woody Allen but after setting up a unique promising concept he unfortunately plays it safe exploring the same sort of themes with characters he’s done too many times in better movies.