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'Melinda and Melinda': Comedy and drama never quite coalesce

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Melinda and Melinda" is the closest thing to a Woody Allen film that Woody Allen has made in a long while. It's middle-rung Woody, but compared to such dismal efforts as "Hollywood Ending" and "Anything Else," the movie is a godsend.

Well, maybe a relief is more like it.

Fox Searchlight Pictures

'Melinda and Melinda'

B-

The verdict: Not Woody at his best, but at least a move in the right direction.

Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Will Ferrell, Radha Mitchell, Neil Pepe, Stephanie Roth Haberle, Larry Pine and Wallace Shawn
Run time: 100 minutes
Release date: March 18, 2005
Rating: PG-13 for adult situations involving sexuality and some substance material
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On the web
Official movie site
View the trailer
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A group of Allen's usual suspects — bright, witty, always up for a discussion on the meaning of life, not very interested in the NFL — are having dinner when a question comes up: Is life a comedy or a tragedy? To solve it, the two playwrights among them — Max (Larry Pine), who writes dramas, and Sy (Wallace Shawn), who writes comedies — are given the same scenario and asked to spin a story.

The scenario: A gorgeous but distraught woman named Melinda ("Finding Neverland's" Radha Mitchell) interrupts a dinner party.

In the tragic version, Melinda has just left her shattered life in the Midwest and walks in on her old college friends in Manhattan. Lee (Jonny Lee Miller) is an aspiring actor with an alcohol problem, and his wife, Laurel (Chloe Sevigny), is a Park Avenue trust-fund baby who dabbles in teaching (but mostly shops). Complications ensue. Among them, a devilishly charming musician, Chiwetel Ejiofor who courts Melinda.

In the comic version, Melinda has swallowed 28 sleeping pills when she crashes her upstairs neighbors' dinner party. They are Susan (Amanda Peet), a feminist filmmaker whose next project is "The Castration Sonata," and her husband, Hobie (Will Ferrell), another aspiring actor, who specializes in giving his characters a limp. Complications ensue. Among them, Hobie finds himself attracted to Melinda.

Eventually, Sy, Max and the guys at the restaurant conclude that tragedy has its comic moments and comedy has its tragic moments.

Who knew?

As the Woody surrogate, Ferrell fares better than Jason Biggs ("Anything Else"), John Cusack ("Bullets Over Broadway") or Kenneth Branagh ("Celebrity"). He gets the timing right and nails the inevitable neurotic twist in the one-liners, some of which are still vintage Allen. When a rival for Melinda's affections, a very wealthy and buff dentist, insinuatingly asks him what he does for exercise, Hobie shoots back, "Tiddly winks and the occasional anxiety attack."

But who wants to watch Will do Woody? He has his own distinctive comic style that's equally appealing, albeit in a very different way.

And who wants to see Sevigny, Miller and Peet stumble through roles that Dianne Wiest, Michael Caine and Barbara Hershey would have played so much better a decade or so ago?

However, the movie's problems aren't entirely the actors' fault. The comic half simply isn't all that funny, and the dramatic half simply doesn't engage us emotionally.

Luckily, Mitchell is funny and emotionally engaging, even though she's caught in a pair of half-thought-through skits that don't coalesce into a convincing film.

That said, "Melinda and Melinda" is at least a good start toward that long longed-for comeback. And when it happens, let's hope Mitchell gets another shot at working with one of the movies' best.