Melvin Goes to Dinner

2003
6.7| 1h23m| en| More Info
Released: 04 December 2003 Released
Producted By: LeFoole Inc.
Country:
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://www.melvingoestodinner.com/
Synopsis

Marital infidelity, religion, a guy in heaven wearing a Wizards jersey, anal fetishes, cigarettes and schizophrenia, ghosts, and how it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

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Reviews

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic
Glimmerubro It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.
Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
Doug Galecawitz i wished this movie would have been longer, a lot longer. it was more interesting and less pretentious than my dinner with andre, mixed a wide and pedestrian set of dialogues with some interesting plot and character points and came up with something rather fun to watch. the actors and actresses (mostly unknown to me) do fine jobs inhabiting their characters (if they are even characters) and dine at of all places a bar. as the night wears on they get drunker and talk about religion, sex, and relationships which are some of the major guideposts of human social life and interaction. the movie easily could have doubled it's length and the subject matter could have been further explored in deeper and deeper ways and still have remained fresh and entertaining while avoiding the artsy abstractions and pretensions of andre. kudos to the writer and director of this film, the later of which i would learn to my surprise is bob odenkirk of mr. show fame. my only beef with the film is the abruptness of it and it's unwillingness to weave deeper levels of understanding about it's subject matter in the way a milan kundera novel does. pity.9 out 10
Alan J. Jacobs This was a great TiVo pickup. I liked the title, got it off IFC. Although Melvin is the title role, I loved Matt Price as Joey. And it does seem to center more around Joey (at least until the "revelation"), and the revelation was a real surprise, one that makes you go back to the beginning and watch all over again.It all about what can happen at a loosely arranged dinner between 2 friends, that expands into a dinner among friends and strangers, where people drink too much wine and start revealing things about themselves, and then it's about coincidences and fate and life-after-death, and everything else that can go on at a casual dinner.But it's not just talk, and the flashbacks and flashforwards make the movie move. And the waitress, Kathleen Roll, with a voice like Lily Tomlin, steals her scenes.
StephanieCoughlin I enjoyed this film a lot more than I thought I would. I found the dialogue compelling in parts, contrived in others.The payoff wasn't strong enough, but I was drawn in. I would have liked to see Melvins relationship fleshed out a little more. I didn't buy the affair between Joey and Sarah. They really had no chemistry at all. Although the four main actors weren't that strong, there were some exceptional performances in smaller roles, most notable Jack Black, as the mental patient, and Kathleen Roll as the delightfully inept waitress.The film would be better served if these two were used more.
chervelle `Melvin Goes to Dinner' gives you a good idea of what the world looks like through the eyes of the uninspiring white guys who made this movie. In a world virtually devoid of any ethnicity but white, the only cameo a person of color makes in this film is as part of a story about a white man's sexual fetishes. (We later learn his other fetishes include bestiality.) In a bold move that probably went entirely unnoticed by the director, this movie became the first film made by guys who consider themselves liberals not to include even the token black waiter. I think I have to call this movie an inadvertent comedy. The dialogue's not funny, but picking apart Odenkirk's mistakes is: 1) adapting such a boring play to begin with 2) expecting the public to accept the inane improbability of such a situation-e.g. men listening to women's opinions on ghosts for any reason other than trying to bed them 3) casting such unlikable talent-(I call him `icky Joey') 4) harnessing characters that are impossible to relate to with the responsibility of making this movie worthwhile. Someone should tell these people women like `Alex' don't exist anywhere but in men's minds. Speaking of Alex, one cannot properly scorn this film without assessing the manifold contributions to its pretentiousness by the cinematographer. One can see that the objective of shooting handheld was to capture the sense of immediacy and intimacy of the dinner-with-friends situation. But Vendler's operating instead produced a jarring and distracting visual experience. It was hard not to be periodically irked by the operator's incompetence or perhaps overconfidence. What was intended to be natural framing instead entailed the frequent, inelegant exiting from view of mouths, noses, and chins which resulted in intended focal points hovering just precisely too close to the edge of the frame. Not to say that the object being framed should always be plastered pornographically in the center of our vision, but that here, the extraordinary clumsiness of the camerawork serves no function other than to detract from the scenic content that was so unfortunately absent to begin with. Anyways, I respectfully suggest that you don't waste your time or money on this film in any capacity - it'll be the most humdrum 70-stretched-to-83-minutes of your life.