Review of Scenes from a Mall (1991) by Danielle S — 16 Jun 2008

A Los Angeles couple (the improbably paired Woody Allen and Bette Midler) head for the mall on their anniversary to do some shopping and, among other things, wind up revealing marital infidelities and having sex with each other in a movie theater.

Aside from the idea of the neurotic Allen visiting a mall, there is surprisingly little entertainment value here. Both actors exert serious effort to impart a humorous spin to some of the most pretentious and tedious dialogue in recent memory.

Shadowed by a particularly irksome mime, an overdressed mariachi band and a barbershop quartet singing carols, the two trade barbs at the mall's various milieus. Sometimes the situations are fresh and funny -- as when they are overcome by lust at a matinee of "Salaam Bombay" --but mostly they are stale and therapeutic.

Still Allen and Midler, with their various other flaws in common, recall partners who have been together so long they are starting to look like each other. They do indeed seem caught up in the conflicting emotions of breaking up, alternately furious, tenderhearted and aggrieved.

The trouble is that as California trendies, they make such familiar targets.