Melinda and Melinda
Dir: Woody Allen
2004
**
Melinda and Melinda is a great idea, the parallel telling of the same story, one as serious drama and one as comedy. To be fair only someone like Woody Allen could conceive such an idea let alone pull it off. Well, he conceived it but he didn't pull it off. On one side I think the characters don't work and are badly written but then the same could be said of some of Allen's other characters that did work. I think it comes down to the actors. The actors and the complexities of the story that only gets more complicated the further into the film you get. Allen's films have gone down in quality overall since 2000 but I'm starting to think it's down to the casting decisions rather than the writing (although any Allen film set in the UK is both badly written, conceived and acted, not to mention best avoided).