The Age of Commercialism

An Exercise In Nonsense

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

"Are those tears of sorrow or tears of joy?" "Well, aren't those the same tears?""Living is messy""I want to want to live."Even in a Woody Allen film, I don't at all care for, there is still a brilliant script at work leaving me with enough quotable lines to be happy with the outing. Melinda and Melinda, the 2004 release written and directed by Woody Allen explored the life of a woman named Melinda whose life was equally as tragic as it was comedic. Leave it to Woody Allen, never one to adhere to a singular narrative structure, to simply tell a story as both a comedy and tragedy. We see Melinda's life, played by Radha Mitchell, as two separate stories intertwined with both tragic and comedic elements. The concept was a novel one, but poor execution hampered the final product. The performances were fine, and the script was superb, but everything else in Melinda and Melinda seemed uninspired. I applaud the director for constantly testing the limits of cinema; in Melinda and Melinda, however, the test simply didn't pay off.

This movie is inspiring. Two stories taking place, simultaneously, with the same character. While one is a tragedy the other is a comedy. The concept is incredibly original and I have yet to see in any other film! This is some of Woody Allen's best work! The type-casting and acting are perfect here. More importantly, you'll see that while Comedy and Tragedy may seem juxtaposed, the ending shows a beautiful convergence of the two. Questions about play writing and the difference between them is blurred. Very creative writing. Not to mention this a brilliant and great movie! I am surprised at the low ratings.I have seen 40 Woody Allen movies and this movie belongs up there with Midnight and Paris, Annie Hall, and Hannah and Her Sisters.

If the audience is supposed to tell which version of the story is a comedy and which is a tragedy, then I can only say, "good luck." There are no visual or audio cues to alert the audience to a switch in the versions. Perhaps a quick wipe accompanied by a sliding sound would alert the viewer to the switch.Even worse, both versions contain elements of both the comic and tragic, so the separation of the versions is even more difficult to discern. If Mr. Allen threw the pages of the script in the air and re-assembled them in no particular order, he could have done no worse.Because, with a few exceptions I'm not familiar with the performers, they looked to me like clones. Perhaps Allen should have instructed them to wear name tags.I like many of Allen's films. The tragic and comic elements in "Crimes and Misdemeanors" are clear cut and don't require captions that read "This is comic" and "This is tragic." The last thing I want to hear from pretentious M&M fans is the comment, "It's so obvious you must be awfully obtuse."

Can't remember an Allen movie I actually liked, but I decided to give this movie a shot nonetheless. The concept was very delightful, but sure enough, Allen is still bad.We all know the usual mannerism of Will Ferrell, but much like every other character in this movie, his delivery was more like an imitation of Allen himself - down to the stuttering. I completely agree with another reviewer who questioned "How many actors can he get to stand in for his own neurotic, compulsive über-New Yorker persona?"Allen's directing style is very distinguished, but I'd say more like repetitive. He's basically producing never ending remakes of the same story with the same characters. The dialogue was horrendous. Wooden clichés sprinkled with occasional fancy words. Hobie considers himself to be an intellect (like all the characters that are projections of Allen) yet he speaks and stutters like a 10-year-old. Then, in the middle of mindless repetitive ramblings where he goes on and on and on about some extremely mundane topic, he throws in a completely random reference to Dostoyevsky or Kieślowski. Wha? Worst thing is - I really think that Woody is giving himself pat on the back for the "ingenious" cultural references. The cinematography wasn't a treat, either. In one of the restaurant scenes the camera sweep was so bad it was painful to watch.Without giving out too much about the ending, the dialogue was so embarrassingly corny, I thought it was a dream sequence until the credits began to roll on the screen. The ending could have been cobbled together by an average 12-year-old fan-fiction writer.