4) Will Ferrell – Melinda and Melinda
In his later years, Woody Allen hasn’t exactly been consistent. There’ll be middling films, there’ll be bombs, and every so often there’ll be movies which – through some mad alchemy – he manages to get just right. Melinda and Melinda falls somewhere in the middle, a mixed bag, with one glaring element sticking out as a major weakness: Will Ferrell trying to play the Woody Allen part, and failing.
It’s not that Ferrell doesn’t try hard; it’s just that Melinda and Melinda requires him to be himself as well a Woody Allen imitator, only he ends up being a pale imitation of both. Ferrell just doesn’t have the dramatic chops to pull it off. In straight comedy he can be a genius; in Melinda and Melinda he’s whiny, nervy, and more than a little irritating. Like Woody Allen then, only minus the nuance Allen brings to his neurotic nerd routine.