When somebody says “It’s a Woody Allen film,” I think you’re supposed to go, “Oh, wow, great, can’t wait to see it.” It’s supposed to indicate that an aging but prolific writer has produced yet another high-quality movie that is bound to touch audiences worldwide with its wit and humanity. In Melinda and Melinda, saying “it’s a Woody Allen film” means that a once-credible film-world has-been managed whip up a pretentious, irrelevant screenplay in only one month’s time, didn’t bother to have his editor read it over, and decided not to splurge on frivolous extras like dialect coaches and trained actors. This movie is a piece of junk, and the biggest flaw is that it’s a Woody Allen film. Whatever that means.

Mr. Allen wanted to know what would happen if you told the same story once as a comedy and once as a drama, in the same movie. Rather than find out by, say, creating a movie that actually does that, he instead created a movie about two pretentious screenwriters (and their two friends) talking about this idea over dinner.

It’s set in a New York café, and there’s a conversation going on between Some Guy Who Writes Tragic Movies, and Wallace Shawn (yes, that’s Vizzini from the Princess Bride) – he writes comedy movies. (Note: There are two other people at the table during the conversation, but they were not given any meaningful lines, roles or apparent purpose in this movie.)

It’s deep conversation. Is life comic or tragic? The two screenwriters disagree, and decide to demonstrate their perspectives by telling two different stories that use the same basic elements: a girl named Melinda interrupts a dinner party between friends and coworkers. She comes with baggage (attempted suicide, divorce, custody battles) and is looking for love. In the following weeks, in both stories, Melinda gets the matchmaker treatment from the dinner hosts, husbands and wives cheat on each other, and the actors use big words that sound very, very awkward on their tongues.

Summarizing each story would be complicated, not because it’s a complex movie, but because I don’t want to bore you with the burden of remembering which Melinda is with the black piano player name Ellis Moonsong, and which Melinda is with the black piano player named Billy Wheeler.

The problem is, the comedy isn’t funny and the tragedy isn’t dark. All of the characters are the same: walking stereotypes of classist pretension, living contrived lives in a very cushioned, very clean New York. Loneliness, abandonment and broken relationships are incredibly tragic themes, but it’s hard to relate to the characters when they’re essentially cardboard cut-outs. All of the characters are unlovable two-dimensional yuppies who live in trendy, upscale NYC lofts and use the word “obsequious” like they know what it means (when the actors actually saying the words clearly do not). Viewers are stopped just short of actually getting to know these characters, because, remember, the movie isn’t about them, the movie is about those two screenwriters discussing their ideas over dinner.

Does it matter that Will Farrell and Steve Carrel are in this movie? Of course it does, because it demonstrates that a name like Woody Allen still has the power to draw popular actors willing to accept a salary cut to star in a film by a supposedly-brilliant movie-maker. But that’s the thing: the movie is not brilliant, not by any stretch of the imagination. It feels like the shallow, gimmicky work of an ambitious college student, striving to prove he can weave his deep knowledge of human interaction with clever new narrative techniques, but failing to take any time to develop his characters, or even think through the best way to present his screenplay’s theme.

Melinda and Melinda is not a film that wrestles with the complexity of life as a tragicomic tangled mess. It’s an untroubling, unfunny movie about pretentious screenwriters in New York, written by Woody Allen – a screenwriter who has lived in New York since his birth. Oh, well. Write what you know, right?