Married couple Larry and Carol Lipton are invited in for coffee by their neighbours Paul and Lillian House and they spend a pleasant evening together, but the following day they learn that Lillian has died of a heart attack. Carol, surprised by how cheerful Paul seems after his wife's death. becomes first suspicious and then convinced that Lilian has been murdered. Larry remains sceptical, telling Carol that she's inventing a mystery where none exists, but Carol takes it upon herself to investigate with the assistance of Ted, a friend of Larry who shares her suspicions. Larry reluctantly gets involved, largely because he is becoming jealous of the amount of time Carol and Ted are spending together. And then Carol claims to have seen the supposedly dead Lillian on a bus.
1992/1993 was a difficult period in Woody Allen's life, the time of his break-up with Mia Farrow after becoming involved with her adopted daughter Soon-Yi. Farrow was originally slated to play Carol in this film, but after the split this became impossible, and Woody's former lover and muse Diane Keaton was cast instead. Apart from a brief cameo in "Radio Days", this was her first film with Woody since "Manhattan" in 1979, and it remains their last collaboration to date. (Unlike his break-up with Farrow, Woody's split from Keaton was relatively amicable, and they continued to work together even when they were no longer romantically involved).
Although he is not obviously Jewish, Larry is in other ways a typical Woody Allen character, a middle-class, intellectual New Yorker. He is also emotionally insecure, something shown by his jealousy of Ted and Carol, who are not romantically involved with one another. Unusually, however, Woody here plays the straight man to Keaton's frenetically neurotic motormouth. Carol might eventually be proved right about Paul's villainy- there is indeed plenty of skulduggery going on- but the fact that she initially suspected him on so little evidence suggests that she is not the most stable or rational of people.
The style of film-making here is similar to that in Woody's previous film, "Husbands and Wives which was distinguished by muted colours, oblique camera angles and two (or sometimes more) characters trying to speak at once, at times giving it a rather amateurish feel. The same features occur in "Manhattan Murder Mystery", especially when Larry and Carol are having one of their verbal duels. (She normally wins; for once, Woody finds himself up against someone who can talk more, and talk faster, than he can). Woody also seems to be avoiding using close-ups as much as possible; conversations are often filmed from a distance, with both parties in the shot at the same time and neither of them in focus.
Woody, of course, has a vast knowledge of film history, and frequently likes to make reference to older films in his own works. Sometimes this cannibalising of the past can be productive; "Play It Again, Sam", for example, with its ghostly Bogart, is one of his best. Here, however, I couldn't really see the point of turning the ending into an homage to a similar scene in Orson Welles' "The Lady from Shanghai", unless the idea was to make the audience think "Gosh, Woody really does know his film noir!" Those audience members who haven't seen Welles's film- as I hadn't when I first saw "Manhattan Murder Mystery" in 1993- will probably find the whole scene a bit baffling. In order to set up this scene Woody came up with a plotline whereby Paul is restoring an old, disused movie theatre, a detail rather at odds with the front Paul likes to present to the world of being a dull, unambitious middle-class retiree.
When Woody deals with serious crime, especially murder, the result can be something very dark and metaphysical, as in "Crimes and Misdemeanors" from 1989 or the more recent "Match Point". In "Manhattan Murder Mystery" and Carol and Ted's suspicions prove well-founded, but the film is surprisingly light in tone, a murder mystery comedy rather than an investigation into the meaning of life, the universe and everything. This tone came as a bit of a surprise to the critics, as the film came after a run of several more serious dramas, including "Crimes and Misdemeanors", "Alice" and "Husbands and Wives". Woody explained that he made the film as a form of therapy after his emotional problems- "I wanted to just indulge myself in something I could relax and enjoy"- so it is perhaps not surprising that it turned out rather lightweight by comparison with some of his other films. There are some occasional funny lines, but "Manhattan Murder Mystery" does not really rank among Woody's best. 7/10
1992/1993 was a difficult period in Woody Allen's life, the time of his break-up with Mia Farrow after becoming involved with her adopted daughter Soon-Yi. Farrow was originally slated to play Carol in this film, but after the split this became impossible, and Woody's former lover and muse Diane Keaton was cast instead. Apart from a brief cameo in "Radio Days", this was her first film with Woody since "Manhattan" in 1979, and it remains their last collaboration to date. (Unlike his break-up with Farrow, Woody's split from Keaton was relatively amicable, and they continued to work together even when they were no longer romantically involved).
Although he is not obviously Jewish, Larry is in other ways a typical Woody Allen character, a middle-class, intellectual New Yorker. He is also emotionally insecure, something shown by his jealousy of Ted and Carol, who are not romantically involved with one another. Unusually, however, Woody here plays the straight man to Keaton's frenetically neurotic motormouth. Carol might eventually be proved right about Paul's villainy- there is indeed plenty of skulduggery going on- but the fact that she initially suspected him on so little evidence suggests that she is not the most stable or rational of people.
The style of film-making here is similar to that in Woody's previous film, "Husbands and Wives which was distinguished by muted colours, oblique camera angles and two (or sometimes more) characters trying to speak at once, at times giving it a rather amateurish feel. The same features occur in "Manhattan Murder Mystery", especially when Larry and Carol are having one of their verbal duels. (She normally wins; for once, Woody finds himself up against someone who can talk more, and talk faster, than he can). Woody also seems to be avoiding using close-ups as much as possible; conversations are often filmed from a distance, with both parties in the shot at the same time and neither of them in focus.
Woody, of course, has a vast knowledge of film history, and frequently likes to make reference to older films in his own works. Sometimes this cannibalising of the past can be productive; "Play It Again, Sam", for example, with its ghostly Bogart, is one of his best. Here, however, I couldn't really see the point of turning the ending into an homage to a similar scene in Orson Welles' "The Lady from Shanghai", unless the idea was to make the audience think "Gosh, Woody really does know his film noir!" Those audience members who haven't seen Welles's film- as I hadn't when I first saw "Manhattan Murder Mystery" in 1993- will probably find the whole scene a bit baffling. In order to set up this scene Woody came up with a plotline whereby Paul is restoring an old, disused movie theatre, a detail rather at odds with the front Paul likes to present to the world of being a dull, unambitious middle-class retiree.
When Woody deals with serious crime, especially murder, the result can be something very dark and metaphysical, as in "Crimes and Misdemeanors" from 1989 or the more recent "Match Point". In "Manhattan Murder Mystery" and Carol and Ted's suspicions prove well-founded, but the film is surprisingly light in tone, a murder mystery comedy rather than an investigation into the meaning of life, the universe and everything. This tone came as a bit of a surprise to the critics, as the film came after a run of several more serious dramas, including "Crimes and Misdemeanors", "Alice" and "Husbands and Wives". Woody explained that he made the film as a form of therapy after his emotional problems- "I wanted to just indulge myself in something I could relax and enjoy"- so it is perhaps not surprising that it turned out rather lightweight by comparison with some of his other films. There are some occasional funny lines, but "Manhattan Murder Mystery" does not really rank among Woody's best. 7/10