When Woody became Edsel...

Rating: 4/10 (17 April 2009)

Today I got disappointed twice: first when watching this movie, second when reading these comments. "Beautiful", "fresh" or "Woody style", used by others, are probably the last words that come to my mind after recalling that experience of terribly wasted 90 minutes of my life (at least, I haven't paid for it a penny, the price of wasted time is high, still) - "Edsel", that's probably the word fulfilling all the feelings about this Allen's movie.
I feel like seeing completely different movie than the others, with their plenty-of-stars ratings. "My" movie was based probably on a short, not more than 15 pages long story of an aspiring writer, who thinks that telling a story without any point is OK. The director, aspiring one as well, then took this topic and made a documentary of it, narrator being the utterly ubiquitous part of the realization. He somehow got those superstars of Southern California to act in it, so he probably got some connections, and, if he learns from mistakes he made in this movie, can be expected to become one of the numerous ordinary directors making seven sterile romantic comedies a year...
..And then you realize, that both the writer and director were Woody Allen. When I watched his earlier films, I usually laughed a lot, cos those were filled with irony and fresh joy of an extraordinary presentation of something ordinary. Now, Woody is just ordinary. It's not this movie only - seeing Melinda and Melinda was also an experience you wonder what the hell have you made to deserve it, for without some fun put into it by Will Ferrell, it is completely stupid. And now, Woody came with Melinda Melinda Barcelona minus Ferrell...
It's a shame that one of the best movie makers of past is embarrassing himself with crap like that. For the "Woody Allen" brand it would be a rescue, if Woody stopped making films, or dropped dead..