Average Rating: 5.8/10
Reviews Counted: 156
Fresh: 82 | Rotten: 74
Woody Allen's uneven Melinda and Melinda fails to find neither comedy nor pathos in what seems like a rehash of his previous themes.
Average Rating: 6/10
Critic Reviews: 39
Fresh: 22 | Rotten: 17
Woody Allen's uneven Melinda and Melinda fails to find neither comedy nor pathos in what seems like a rehash of his previous themes.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.1/5
User Ratings: 15,601
While Woody Allen has long fused comedy and drama in his films, he embraces the two styles in a new and unusual way in this feature. Sy (Wallace Shawn) is enjoying dinner with some friends when they begin debating the nature of the tragic and the humorous. Sy, observing that a very fine line separates the two, decides to demonstrate this notion by showing how the same essential story can be either funny or sad depending on the way certain elements are handled; for the rest of the film, we jump
Mar 18, 2005 Limited
Oct 25, 2005
$3.7M
Fox Searchlight Pictures
All Critics (156) | Top Critics (39) | Fresh (85) | Rotten (75) | DVD (24)
Neither version of Melinda, despite Mitchellâ(TM)s game try at making them distinctive beyond their different hairdos, is funny or tragic enough to fully engage us; thereâ(TM)s no opportunity for an audience to be moved.
The Shawn character says, 'Moments of humor do exist (in life). I exploit them, but in a tragic context.' Allen couldn't have said it better himself.
It's middle-rung Woody, but compared to such dismal efforts as "Hollywood Ending" and "Anything Else," the movie is a godsend.
Has a fascinating premise; it's the execution that's sloppy.
The comic and tragic stories are cleverly intercut, but they're both so inconsequential that it's hard to bring yourself to care which one you're watching.
It's pleasant and challenging enough, in fits and starts, and certainly not the embarrassment of his last few movies.
Great premise, but talky dramedy doesn't deliver.
While the main lure for audiences--Will Ferrell--is basically forgettable, Allen does compose one fascinating and witty look at the human mind and its own ability to depict events through our own sub-conscious preference.
Reminds us there is little to divide comedy from tragedy, and that neither comes exclusively. After all, the tears of sorrow and the tears of joy both come from the same place, and dampen a tissue with equal intensity.
Mitchell, in her dual role, gives a breakout performance (two of them, in fact).
A movie just shouldn't feel like homework. And with the constant shift in stories and repeatedly reinvented characters, unless you're in the mood for taking notes, you're going to feel like you're invited to rehearsals, rather than the finished product.
A movie just shouldn't feel like homework. And with the constant shift in stories and repeatedly reinvented characters, unless you're in the mood for taking notes, you're going to feel like you're invited to rehearsals, rather than the finished product.
full review in Greek
All the inner workings of "Melinda and Melinda" show that Allen has finally risen above, returned to his position as a fine filmmaker.
It 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.
Allen presents the side-by-side stories as if to compare the comic and tragic views of experience, and it might work but for the fact that the two [playwrights] come up with dissimilar plots featuring different characters played mostly by different actors
One story, two versions, each from Woody Allen, so you know you're in for it.
The comic side isn't really that comic.
A welcome return to form from a really talented guy who's been churning out cinematic junk for the past few years.
More like Banal and Banal.
(...) aburrida, ni lo suficientemente cómica, ni lo suficientemente dramática...
Not since Gwyneth Paltrow's Sliding Doors has such a film drawn parallels between two sides of the same story based on cursory details. Allen tells the same tale of a beautiful girl with problems, one side his theatrical drama and the other a quirky comedy. Both stories center around a woman named Melinda, on one side
August 14, 2010Super Reviewer
One of those movies with so much dialogue that I've got to see three times before I can fully appreciate it - I don't have the power of concentration enough to keep up with the plot on the first viewing and I don't taking in all the subtleties until the third! It's an entertaining story, made even more so by being the
November 27, 2010Super Reviewer
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