Wow, has Woody Allen really sunken so low, so low that the best character in his film is played by Will Ferrell? Yes I guess he has. This movie had so much promise and just threw it all away with some of the worst, most stilted dialogue I have ever seen. I hear his new film is a return to form, and I hope so because Woody really needs a good film, unfortunately this isn’t it.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

An interesting concept, we have a group of friends having dinner, with one comedy writer and one drama writer, and they take the idea one person gives, and each spin it into their own story. The drama and the comedy stories are both intercut with only the character of Melinda (Radha Mitchell) being the similarity. In both stories she shows up at a dinner party uninvited and causes a huge ruckus that changes everyone’s lives.

In the drama, Melinda is a disturbed old friend of the people at the party, and moves in with Laurel (Chloe Sevigny) a failed musician, and her loser, and cheater actor husband Lee (Jonny Lee Miller). Eventually she falls for a musician played by Chiwetel Ejiofer (The Operative from Serenity), who eventually ends p with Laurel, ruining the fragile and completely fucked up woman.

In the comedy she ends up at the dinner party of failed actor Hobie (Will Ferrell) and Susan (Amanda Peet) an AD with a script that is going to be made into a movie, and who really doesn’t love her husband at all. They try and get Melinda a man, and she eventually gets one, as Hobie’s marriage falls apart. He wants to confess his love, but it is too late, but eventually they end up together.

This had so much potential, to be both a drama and a comedy of Woody Allen’s would have been amazing, but the stilted dialogue really kills this film. I am sure he is commenting on the loser upper-class of New York in the drama, but the dialogue is so bad and so forced. The best part of the movie is Will Ferrell doing his best Woody Allen interpretation, but I have never been a fan, so this film really fails on all fronts for me. What a waste!