Review of Melinda and Melinda (2004) by Manny C — 11 Apr 2011

After the mediocrity that was Anything Else, Woody Allen bounced back in 2005 with this under-appreciated dramedy, Melinda and Melinda, a challenging little film that is really two films in one, linked by one extraordinary actress, Aussie beauty Radha Mitchell (Finding Neverland, Rogue), playing the dual roles of Melinda and Melinda.

We have two playwrights (Wallace Shawn and Larry Pine), debating whether life is comic or tragic. To settle their argument they come up with the idea of a blonde beauty named Melinda bursting into the Manhattan apartment of two married friends having a dinner party. One imagines the scenario as a farce and one imagines it as an intense drama. Allen cuts back and forth between the two, and he's not subtle with it either, he wants you to be jerked around. But stay with it, because Melinda and Melinda is a real treat.

The comedic story sees Melinda as a single neighbor who randomly steps into the life of out-of-work actor Hobie (Will Ferrell) and his filmmaker wife Susan (the lively Amanda Peet). Susan, whose latest film is entitled The Castration Sonata, volunteers to find a good guy for Melinda, but Hobie decides he's that guy.

The tragic tale sees Melinda as a nutty schoolmate of Laurel (Chloe Sevigny) and her unfaithful, unemployed husband Lee (Jonny Lee Miller), who encounter Melinda when she interrupts their entertaining their friend Cassie (Brooke Smith, superbly funny). Melinda enters with a sad story: her doctor husband has just left her after she cheated on him, and won custody of their children, something that has her contemplating suicide and murder.

All that and no Woody in sight, having had the good wisdom to finally realize his seventy something year old self doesn't fit in with thirtysomething Manhattanites.

Ferrell basically steps into the Woody role, stammering and exuding sexual panic, vintage Woody traits. This isn't the first time another actor has filled this role, John Cusack did on ok job doing it in Bullets Over Broadway, and Kenneth Branagh did it terribly in Celebrity. Ferrell pulls it off nicely. When his wife Susan sets Melinda up with a hunky dentist (Josh Brolin), jealous Hobie remarks that it's a terrible idea since she just divorced a doctor. ;A dentist is the same thing, only oral.' Ferrell quips. The only caveat with Ferrell is that much of his performance feels like nothing but an Allen imitation, with only little hints of Ferrell's own comedic persona shining through. That comes through best when Hobie discovers his wife in bed with another man, clearing the way for him to woo Melinda, and it makes him absolutely giddy.

Things become more complicated when an unstable Melinda hooks up with Ellis (Chiwetel Ejiofar in one of his best roles), a jazz pianist in Harlem who eventually dumps her for Laurel (Sevigny is touching in the role). It's in these scenes that cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond creates a fantastic film noir atmosphere as accusations fly. And Mitchell is excellent in the role, especially when she fully embraces her darker side.

It's all set to the soothing notes of Duke Ellington and Stravinsky, set in Woody's immortal Manhattan. Melinda and Melinda is an all too criminally under-rated achievement in Woody's recent oeuvre.