Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Larry Lipton	Woody Allen
Carol Lipton	Diane Keaton
Ted	Alan Alda	½
Marcia Fox	Anjelica Huston
Paul House	Jerry Adler	½
Lillian House	Lynn Cohen
Helen Moss	Melanie Norris	½
Nick Lipton	Zach Braff

Review

Woody Allen raids the vault of old classics and his own early films for this constructed and painfully manic version of Rear Windows for the neurotic. Woody teams up with Diane Keaton for the first time since Manhattan (not counting Radio Days) as the two jog each other up to record-breaking levels of fussiness, wandering around in staged and allegedly mysterious situations while keeping a consistent conversation about intellectual meanderings and their neurological state. In essence, Allen presents very little new here, especially characterologically. His script has great bits of comedy in it, but he doesn't know when to stop his scenes or mouth, and the mystery not surprisingly turns out to be rather contrived making the film lightweight and rather shallow. That is a shame, because the film starts off promisingly with pleasantly natural conversations between desexualized couples and newly divorced bachelors, and the film has potential when it comes to the romantic relations and the study of once bubbling marriages gone still. Manhattan Murder Mystery is a sad document of how out of fashion Woody Allen was in the early 1990s, from the weary thematics to the horrible wardrobe and the unflattering camerawork and lighting.