MOVIE REVIEW: Melinda and Melinda

Radha Mitchell plays the fetchingly neurotic female lead, Melinda, a rich doctor’s ex-wife who can’t seem to pull her life together enough to find another husband. Though Allen fans may enjoy the now-familiar neuroses and emotional repression, Melinda suffers from a lack of originality that its overdone subject matter only emphasizes.

Playing off the idea that the line between comedy and tragedy is hair thin, Melinda and Melinda tells two parallel stories of one neurotic woman, Melinda. The formal agenda is augmented by a framing device wherein dapper middle-aged New York playwrights enjoy a leisurely lunch and, in the course of discussing the two genres, ad lib the stories of Melinda for the entertainment of their friends. The dramatist weaves a “tragedy” while the comedy writer composes a “comedy.”

But at least in this case, the parallels between tragedy and comedy are deadened by contrived and unoriginal plots. A wealthy socialite (Chloe Sevigny) is bored with her marriage and cheats on her alcoholic failing actor husband (Jonny Lee Miller), who is, sleeping with a student in one of his acting classes.

The characters are neither sympathetic nor unlikable; they’re just annoyingly one-dimensional and, perhaps worse, there is so little differentiation between them that all seem to be minor versions of Woody Allen. The actors pick up on this, and the result is a cast of profoundly self-absorbed Woody reincarnations who expound on the themes of marital infidelity and ennui from within the safe confines of mouth-watering Manhattan apartments.

The dearth of nuance results in a feeling of awkwardness that permeates each scene. Everyone seems to be holding his breath, though perhaps no one so much as Will Ferrell.

Ferrell takes on the Woodiest character of all as leading-man Hobie—another failed actor married to an over-controlling producer (Amanda Peet)—but his performance is unconvincing.

Many will be curious to see how Ferrell fares in high-brow comedy. The frenzied quality of Hobie’s self-repression may lend the film an undercurrent of energy, but there is also that nagging feeling that Ferrell is just itching to rip off his clothes and make a penis joke. With little room for off-the-cuff physical comedy and a wishy-washy part, Ferrell languishes.

Radha Mitchell is a bright spot in the film, but it’s unclear whether she shines because of natural flair or because her part is the only one with enough depth for credibility.

In Melinda, the genres of tragedy and comedy intermingle to the point that each takes on qualities of the other and neither is convincing. A nervous breakdown is so sudden and half-hearted as to be unaffecting, while the genuinely comic moment is when Hobie’s (Ferrell) bath robe gets caught in the front door of Melinda’s apartment. As expected, Allen errs on the side of humor, so that Melinda is really a pairing of two comedies, one darker than the other, neither of which is really funny.

—Staff writer Emer C.M. Vaughn can be reached at evaughn@fas.harvard.edu.