Melinda and Melinda is Woody Allen’s best film, I feel, since Mighty Aphrodite. But it’s not one of his very best, and he’ll probably never get back up there to Manhattan or Crimes and Misdemeanor-land until he hooks with a co-writer, preferably someone a good 25 years younger. Allen is almost 70 and he just isn’t getting the world as sharply as he used to. He needs a younger guy (or woman) to challenge him and give his scripts some zip, and that’s not a tough pill to swallow. He partnered with Marshall Brickman on Annie Hall and with Douglas McGrath on Bullets over Broadway…so it’s not like this is a new concept.
