TRH Movie – Heights And Melinda & Melinda

Yesterday was pretty much a write off for me, my RRHB was working so I spent much of the day in my pajamas watching the movies I had taped on the Faux-Vo. The first film I watched, Heights, was a quasi-Crash-like movie about how the lives of six or seven New Yorkers intertwined. At the centre of the story is Diana Lee, an overly dramatic, highly paid stage actress played by Glenn Close, um, very little stretch there. Her daughter, Isabel (Elizabeth Banks, the poor man’s Rachel McAdams), an aspiring photographer, is about to get married to Jonathan (James Marsden). There’s some non-interesting backstory with the fiance and a really predictable emotional “twist” toward the end. All in all, fairly typical fare for TMN.

And like Crash it sort of suffers from the ‘way too much coincidences going on’ syndrome. You know, movies about actors and actresses also tend to suffer from navel gazing self-indulgence, so much so that I tend not to care after a while. Oh, poor you Glenn Close/Diana Lee, with your fabulous apartment in NYC and your fabulous life on stage, your husband’s cheating on you and you have low self-esteem. Yawn.

Then I watched Melinda and Melinda. I wanted to see it for three reasons: a) it’s Woody Allen, b) the premise of two separate stories starting the same character sounded interesting and c) it costars Chiwetel Ejiofor, who is one of my favs after seeing Inside Man, and forever-in-my-heart Jonny Lee Miller, whose portrayal of Byron remains burned in my mind as one of the great, but little seen biopic performances of the last few years. Both actors played in separate episodes of BBC’s retelling of The Canterbury Tales too, which I quite enjoyed.

Annnywaaay. Melinda and Melinda. Suffice to say I found the dialogue stilted and aged, kind of like old cheddar, but it didn’t fit the environment or the characters. The premise of the film, four friends sitting around enjoying dinner and then telling Melinda’s story, each from a different perspective, one tragic, the other comic, was okay, but it didn’t sell the movie to me. A lot of the same problems I found with Match Point, exist in this film as well.

And considering that I fell asleep during the crucial emotional conflict during Dramatic Melinda’s storyline, it doesn’t bode well for the rest of the film. My advice is that if you’re going to see a Woody Allen film from the past couple years, skip this one and go straight to Match Point. Even though it’s not perfect, it’s a damn sight better than Melinda and Melinda.

And now we’re here on Sunday. Back after a day of visiting various different mothers. My RRHB is watching boxing. I’m blogging. And I’m about to start the laundry. Thank goodness I found some energy today. Real life is kind of nice when you think about it.