A retrospective by Brooks Rich
I know Woody Allen is a complicated figure. He is a creep in a lot of ways and some people find his sexual weirdness to be too much. I get that. But on the blog I sometimes like to separate the art from artist. Not always to be sure. Jeepers Creepers will never be covered here because Victor Salva is a useless piece of human garbage. What he did I can't ignore. Allen I can push aside him being weird to cover him now and then. It's hard to write a film blog and not mention a Woody Allen film now and then. The man has some bangers. And I've always wanted to cover this film. The concept is so interesting and Allen post 2000 is fertile ground for Forgotten Film Friday. So let's look at the film and not Allen himself.
Melinda and Melinda is a dual narrative about a woman named Melinda, an underrated and brilliant Radha Mitchell, who shows up unexpectedly at a dinner party in New York. The film questions if life is inherently tragic or comic and the two different narratives tell the following story as a tragedy and comedy. Each narrative has similar beats but go different ways based on if it's funny or sad. The story is basic and the film really leans on the dual narrative gimmick.
This is not a lost classic in Allen's filmography. Melinda and Melinda is not going to be on any list with Annie Hall or even Manhattan, a film I find to be the worst of Allen being pretentious. But this is a solid film and I think there's a lot working here. Mitchell is absolutely the film's strongest trait. She makes the two Melinda's feel different from each other and both performances feel real. Also Will Ferrell is the Woody Allen counterpart in this film and that just makes sense. He is the other thing that really works. This is a great underrated Ferrel performance. Not up there with his all timer performance in Stranger Then Fiction but he is still very good in this.
Some of this doesn't work. Dialogue can be real clunky and stilted. Characters recap what someone said off camera to catch the audience up. I hate that in screenwriting. It's like when someone in a movie says as you know followed by something the audience needs to hear. Ugh the worst. I really have an issue with unnatural dialogue that is only there for the benefit of the audience. No one would speak this way but they have to in order to get plot points across.
Also what are these homes these people live in? The main couple of each film has an out of work actor as the guy of the couple. Why are they living in these multi million dollar New York homes? Jonny Lee Miller's Lee in the tragic story is such an over the top asshole it plays more comedically than tragic. But I guess that can be a point Allen is making. Really comedy and tragedy are intertwined in real life. Something can be so tragically over the top it reads as humorous. I get that sure.
I think this is worth a watch. Some might think I'm crazy and this is a nothing note in Allen's overall filmography. Even some might hate everything about this film. That could happen to be sure. But I think this will really work for some people. The two narratives will interest them enough to find something meaningful here. And at the least I think this is worth a watch once for Mitchell's performance alone. Melinda and Melinda. It's no Blue Jasmine but it's better than Stardust Memories.
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