Arts & Life

haohei sweaters

We can customize shape
to flatter every individual

Thursday, April 7th 10-8
Friday, April 8th
10-6
Saturday, April 9th 10-5

Available now through fall

On the Boardwalk

Will Ferrell and Woody Allen on the set of "Melinda and Melinda"

248-626-7776

Two-Sided Story

Woody Allen's film about two "Melindas" is his
strongest — but least- Jewish — film in years.

MICHAEL FOX

Special to the Jewish News

M

The 410-•

Melting Pot

a fondue restaurant

Dip into something different"

888 W Big Beaver Road • Troy • (248) 362 - 2221

Come dip into one of the area's most romantic restaurants. Here the only thing
that will melt faster than the cheese fondue is your heart. Call for reservations.

Enjoy I0 off c

N
„. :i 5;1 i 71 X O ut

Present this ad and receive S10 Off Valid towards the purchase of any combination dinner or four-course

f ondue dinner for two. No cash value. Cannot be used with any other offer or for gratuity. One offer per couple.-

Valid at Troy-MI location Sunday-Thursday only. Not Valid on holidays or special events. Expires 6/30/05

3/31
2005

48

Over 80 locations nationwide I www.meltingpot.com

956160

elinda and Melinda,
Woody Allen's latest come-
dy, about the beautiful and
bewildered in Manhattan's tonier
neighborhoods, marks a partial return
to form but a continued distancing
from his Jewish identity.
There's plenty of paranoia, self-
doubt and guilt, but that's hardly the
exclusive province of Jews. What's
missing — and is sorely missed — is
Allen's typical salting of Jewish-
themed wisecracks.
Allen's appearance in his films
makes them patently Jewish, and this
is the first since Sweet and Lowdown
(1999) in which he does not give
himself a role. But it is not only his
absence — unavoidable since the cen-
tral characters are in their 30s — that
strips the movie of a dimension of
ethnic personality.
The setting is the WASP-y Upper
East Side and Greenwich Village,
rather than Allen's old cinematic
stomping grounds on the Upper West
Side. While the apartments and lofts
are snazzy and well appointed, they
also feel oddly generic.

A bigger problem is that most of
the one-liners go to Will Ferrell

(Saturday Night Live, Anchorman),

who's successfully played clowns but
has no idea how to create a three-
dimensional character. For much of
the movie, Ferrell aspires to be an
obtuse, 21st century Tony Roberts
(the wonderful foil from Annie Hall);
the rest of the time he does an
embarrassing Allen impersonation.
Although Ferrell gets a laugh with a
throwaway line about Nuremberg —
the only Jewish joke in the movie, to
my ears — I suspect that Allen cut a
bunch of similar gags from the
screenplay after he cast the part or
perhaps after he started shooting.
The good news is that Woody has
regained his sense of story structure
after the pointless, contrived hi-jinks
of The Curse of the Jade Scorpion,
Hollywood Ending and Anything Else.
Melinda and Melinda begins in a
restaurant, where writers Wallace
Shawn and Larry Pine are debating
the distinction between comedy and
tragedy. A dining companion relates
an anecdote, which the authors
expand into comic and serious varia-
tions.
In the heavier story, Melinda

-