Melinda and Melinda

While out to dinner with friends, two playwrights (one the author of comedies, the other tragedies) are presented with the scenario of a woman with a troubled past who shows up unexpectedly at her friend’s doorstep and each begins to weave their own version of the story, comically or tragically respectively. Great concept by Woody Allen doesn't exactly come off and perhaps would have worked better told as two separate stories standing alone. Allen has done the tragiocomic thing before at.a masterful level but this is still amiable enough. Radha Mitchell succeeds with a tough charge in playing the lead in both tellings and Will Ferrell, tasked with taking on the Woody persona, gets a mixed bag of hilarious and throwaway one-liners. *** out of ****