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88In its complexity and wit, this is one of his (Allen's) best recent films.
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88Allen gives us at least half a classic comedy - more than we usually get at the movies these days - while having some elegant fun with an idea that has intrigued poets and smart alecks through the ages: the interchangeability of comedy and tragedy.
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88Smart, satisfying and compact but so modest in scale that only true-blue fans will sense - immediately - that it's Woody Allen's best outing in many years.
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80Woody's back on solid ground with his first memorable pic of the new millennium.
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80It has great performances, snappy one-liners and a likeably tricksy structure, all wrapped up in an affirmative antidote to life's daunting complexities. Welcome back, Woody.
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80Radha Mitchell stirs memories of complex Allen heroines from Annie Hall on down, even if the action is dispersed via a larger ensemble cast which he currently favors.
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80Full of entertaining vignettes that eventually make a happy mockery, as they're meant to do, of the tragedy vs. comedy dialectic.
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75With Melinda and Melinda he's (Allen) not just going through the motions. He's saying the game isn't over before you laugh till it hurts.
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75This is closer to an Allen comeback than anything else he's made recently. Maybe he'll achieve it with his next movie, "Match Point," due this year.
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75More accomplished, adventurous and original. Instead of Allen's usual investigation into the nature of existence, this new film looks at the way stories are created, particularly comedies.
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75Though Melinda is no masterpiece, it's also an Allen film that requires almost zero special pleading.
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70As he (Allen) interweaves two versions of the Melinda story, one meant to be bathed in pathos, the other sprinkled with whimsy, it becomes apparent that his notions of comedy and tragedy do not quite correspond either to scholarly dogma or to everyday usage.
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70It's emotionally more alive than anything Allen has done since "Sweet and Lowdown," in 1999. I was absorbed in it, and I liked parts of it. And I wish to God it were better.
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67The best reason to see Melinda and Melinda is Radha Mitchell, who has her grabbiest role (or two of them) since she broke through with "High Art."
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67It's breezy enough, though, as a romantic comedy. And the stakes at risk in it are more grown-up and weighty than those in most Hollywood fare. Like Allen himself, you could do worse.
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67tTere are two things going for Melinda and Melinda: Woody's not in it and Radha Mitchell is.
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63But Allen can still write a good joke and there are some here. Not enough to say he has returned to form, but enough to remind you of what that form was.
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63The dialogue rings tinny in the ear, as if enunciated in the phony arc of a stage light.
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63Has a fascinating premise; it's the execution that's sloppy.
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63Allen's best effort since 1999's "Sweet and Lowdown," but that's not saying a lot.
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63Whatever you think of Melinda and Melinda, you have to admire Woody Allen for this: After years of criticism that he didn't use people of color in films, he's written two interracial romances.
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60Neither comedy nor tragedy, the movie is closest to genteel soap opera.
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60Allen has assembled an attractive cast and given most of them clichés to inhabit. He has also stinted on inventiveness.
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60A medium-boil good time, mostly for its humor.
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50Beautifully shot by the great Vilmos Zsigmond, the movie is watchable, sporadically amusing and ultimately frustrating, because Allen is capable of so much more, but doesn't appear interested -- or willing -- to push himself any longer.
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Not since Edward Norton kicked his own butt in Fight Club has the screen witnessed such a brutal self-drubbing.
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50Doesn't entirely work.
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50It's all very well to say that laughter and tears are just a heartbeat apart, but both variations on Melinda's story bear the unmistakable mark of Allen's morose sensibilities.
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50When are we going to get a generation of actors who will finally decline to succumb to The Woody Mystique, and refuse to accept a proffered role without first deciding whether the entire damn project is worthwhile?
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50From its austere opening credits to its screechy women, this 35th film by Woody Allen looks and sounds like a dozen other Allen movies.
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50It's merely all right--very high-concept and on its way to interesting, but never there.
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40Even these actors -- who, in other pictures, are often wonderful in distinctive ways -- don't seem like themselves: It's as if they've been pulverized and pressed into convenient actor shapes.
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40Allen's view of what's "deeply real" feels ever more deeply bogus as the movie progresses, his trademark wit having calcified into pastiche and unintended self-parody.
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40The Australian actress Radha Mitchell is the only reason to see the movie: She has an extraordinary open face and a way of mixing dreaminess with sudden bursts of lacerating emotion that recalls Jessica Lange.
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40The grave story is leaden, the comic story isn't funny, and the comparison--the rivalry--between the two modes is never crystallized.
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38It's disconcerting to see Ferrell, a master of macho psychosis, adopt the stop-and-go dithering of Woody Allen-style neurosis.
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30A second-rate comedy and a third-rate drama, Melinda And Melinda gives viewers two unsatisfying movies in one. The only genuine tragedy here involves a once-brilliant comedy writer plunging further into a seemingly permanent artistic freefall.
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30Give Woody Allen credit for ambition. Failing at one movie wasn't enough. Nearly anyone can do that; it happens all the time. He's chosen to fail at two simultaneously.
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30This is mainly a narrative brain-teaser like "Memento" or "The Jacket"; merely keeping up with the game requires so much energy that the thinness of the material becomes fully apparent only toward the end.
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20These days, Allen's pictures are more like snuff films, in which the viewer must suffer both gifted actors committing screen hara-kiri and a once-brilliant filmmaker soldiering on with his long, bullheaded decline.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 8 out of 19
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Mixed: 6 out of 19
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Negative: 5 out of 19
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5
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CraigA.1
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TonyB.4