Woody flops on latest film

Woody Allen's "Melinda and Melinda" is perhaps the most ambitious and interesting thing the director-writer has done since the 1990s -- but what does that mean, exactly? Saying it's better than "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion" or "Hollywood Ending" isn't exactly a ringing endorsement, since watching a ham sandwich fall to mold would be better than watching those movies again. Neither should it be interpreted to mean it's particularly good, since the 1990s were still a rather haphazard period for the quality of Allen's films.\nI guess, in the end, it means we've lost the Allen of "Annie Hall," "Manhattan," "Sleeper" and "Hannah and Her Sisters," and we've got to settle with the Allen we have now. And as far as that's concerned, "Melinda" is better than some of the other duds he's turned in, but it's still a dud on its own.\nThe movie begins with an interesting premise: at a restaurant, two playwrights are debating whether life is intrinsically comic or tragic after hearing the tale of a woman named Melinda. We're given both versions of the story, according to each playwright, with Radha Mitchell playing Melinda in both halves, crisscrossing between the two stories in a Manhattan where everyone majored in liberal arts and owns breathtaking lofts on an unemployed actor's salary. \nIn the tragic half, Melinda stumbles in on a dinner party of some old friends, Laurel (Chloë Sevigny) and her out-of-work actor husband Lee (Jonny Lee Miller). This incarnation of Melinda is fresh off a rocky past, and despite her pill-popping depression, manages to get romantically involved with a pianist named Ellis (Chiwetel Ejiofor), which due to the tragedy, will inevitably cause strife.\nThe comedy half is more Allen-esque, due in part to the presence of Will Ferrell, who is obviously mimicking the only screen version of Allen that exists: a neurotic, sex-obsessed misanthrope. Ferrell plays Hobie, another struggling actor who married to an ice queen named Susan (Amanda Peet), an independent filmmaker. Melinda in this version is the distraught beautiful woman in the apartment downstairs, who Hobie falls madly in love with.\nFor its fascinating premise alone, I admire the hell out of "Melinda and Melinda" -- no matter how hard it falls on its face. But with the exception of Ferrell and the comic Melinda, Allen has managed to present a cast of characters that is wholly unlikable. They're pretentious and self-absorbed, but not in a cute way; and most likely, any given character is an alcoholic or an adulterer. Despite all the dinner parties the characters are having, I felt like I wouldn't want to be in a room with any of them. And there's nothing funny about that.