Personally, I’ve always felt that critics need to lay off Woody Allen a bit. It’s true that his career probably peaked sometime in the late 70’s or early 80’s, but you can’t constantly be churning out pure brilliance—it’s just not possible (even Handel is best remembered for rehashing himself). It’s probably also true that his themes haven’t evolved much over the last couple of decades, but nobody ever held that against Yasujiro Ozu. Call him self-indulgent if you will, but what else could you possibly expect from a cinematic tradition that came of age in the 1970s?

And even if his career has gone downhill somewhat, he still knows how to make a watchable film.

Melinda and Melinda finds him doing what he’s arguably been doing for the last 30 years—mixing comedy and tragedy—but with a slightly different angle than he’s ever taken before. Rather than tell a tragic comedy (or a comic tragedy), he tells (roughly) the same story twice—once as a tragedy, and once as a comedy—intermingling the scenes, but keeping them distinct. The film opens with a group immersed in discussion at a restaurant: a comedy writer (Wallace Shawn) who insists that life is essentially tragic is arguing passionately with a tragedy writer (Larry Pine) who claims that life is essentially comic. To further the discussion, one of their companions (Neil Pepe) gives them a scenario, which they then take turns telling—the former comically, and the latter tragically.

This story more-or-less takes up the rest of the film, as the two alternate between their tragic and comic versions. Radha Mitchell plays the title character in both versions: a woman with a troubled past who interrupts an important dinner with the happy news that she has just attempted suicide. Mitchell is the only actor that appears in both versions, with the “tragic” version featuring Jonny Lee Miller, Chloë Sevigny and Brooke Smith, and the “comic” version featuring Will Ferrell, Amanda Peet, and Steve Carrell. It’s a relatively conventional story—one about Melinda searching for stability in her life and her relationships, but in this respect, it serves its purpose in the film well, giving the storytellers something to play with however they choose.

As I’ve said, this is nothing Woody Allen hasn’t explored before thematically (i.e., the idea that comedies can be tragic and that tragedies can be comic), but it’s done in a novel enough way that it manages to draw you in. Most of the actors have fun with the proceedings (even the usually vastly overrated Ferrell, who puts in a pretty good Allen impersonation here), with those in the comedy delivering their lines with bravado and those in the tragedy chewing the scenery appropriately. It’s particularly fun to watch Mitchell invent different personas for the two sides of her character.

The biggest issue with Melinda is that its visuals are fairly uninspired, which is disappointing coming from the director who used to make visually brilliant films like Sleeper and Annie Hall. Everything in Melinda is shot in a sunny palette from relatively basic angles—which is disappointing, considering the visual flourish that the subject matter arguably warrants. It would have made the film both more interesting and easier to follow if Allen had chosen to shoot the two stories in different ways, or with different color palettes.

Still, this is a relatively minor complaint, and while Melinda and Melinda doesn’t offer anything particularly revolutionary, it’s an enjoyable hour-and-forty-minutes that might make you think a bit. If nothing else, it’s got some funny moments.

Oh, and also some tragic ones.