Melvin Goes to Dinner (2003)

i don't get this s**t. You have cameos from all these funny, interesting actors, and you cast the leads as there community theater rejects? what gives? what are you trying to covey? The content become contrived and predictable after a while. The dialog COULD have been striking, but s**t, you got Jack Black playing a mental defect, and Laura Kitelinger on screen for like a second and a half, and you cast the movie with these forced dialog suckers? I don't get it, Bob, i don't' get it. This film had a lot of potently but failed. I DE-Recommend this film. Don't bother, It's not worth it. It's too simple, but could have been good.

Movies made up entirely of conversation are tricky. The amazing thing about My Dinner with Andre was, you had two people sitting in a restaurant talking for an hour and a half and it was riveting. Since I only watched about a half hour I can't say if this whole movie is conversations, but what I saw is a string of conversations mixed in with flashbacks that may also be conversations. So it's basically a lot of talking.It's sort of interesting conversation, although nothing really new. And this may explain something pointed out by another reviewer here, that this movie gets much lower ratings from those over 45. I think their point was, middle-aged and old people just don't get it, but perhaps the problem is they got it long ago. Perhaps we've all had these conversations many times in our lives and just don't find any of this new or original or profound. I'm 45, I've had too many of these conversations. It gets old. So if you're young, watch the movie, enjoy it, and then watch it again when you're 45 and see what you think.

Michael Blieden wrote the play on which "Melvin Goes to Dinner" is based and he also authored the screenplay. He's Melvin, an apparent early dropout from psychiatry working for his sister in some municipal planning department. He plans on dinner with his old friend, Joey (Matt Rice) and their pal, Alex (Stephanie Courtney). With flashbacks, we learn that Alex ran into her business school classmate whom she hasn't seen for seven years, Sarah (Annabelle Gurwitch) and invited her to join the trio for dinner.What follows is a typical casual, restaurant get-together among friends in their thirties who engage in random and rapidly shifting chatter. The usual topics prevail: friendship, work, the ticking of a woman's biological clock, reincarnation, anal sex, cheating on lovers - the list goes on. They have a waitress, unnamed (Kathleen Roll), who's predictably ditzy.It's all been done before but there is a surprise here near the end, a big one. And the quartet is engaged in some probing but fleeting talk about life issues that matter to most viewers, especially younger ones. The cast is largely inexperienced-only one, Ms. Gurwitch, has any real list of credits.One really neat episode: recounting his experiences as a staff shrink (and improbably wearing not only surgical garb but a face mask around his throat), Melvin interviews a purportedly schizophrenic patient played, without a credit, by Jack Black. Black's nutcase actually espouses one of the most lucid and convincing views of the nature of life I've ever seen on the screen. He doesn't belong on a psych ward. It really got me thinking."Melvin Goes to Dinner" is neither as terrific as some claim nor as bad as others feel. If, like me, you are a restaurant voyeur who compulsively listens in on conversations emanating from other tables, you'll feel at home here and particularly enjoy following the whole interchange without being distracted by talking with your friends or having to deal with wait staff.7/10

Four people, two guys and two gals, at different places in their lives, chance to meet at a restaurant for dinner one day, and end up revealing themselves and discovering each other in ways none of them could have predicted. For the most part, they are bright, young, upwardly mobile professionals, comfortable discussing themselves, and hence even without a psychologist to act as moderator, they interact in a manner reminiscent of group therapy. That is, they take turns admitting their secret thoughts and obsessions, take issue with each other on some points, and try to benefit from each other's experiences and perspectives. One of them even has some background in a field related to psychiatry, but of course with minimal insight.The point of the film seems to be that, thanks to their group discussion, they all develop a wider perspective on life, but especially Melvin, whose life had been spiraling out of control. In some regards he seems the brighter of the four, yet the least insightful. All of the characters become more aware of themselves through their interactions over dinner, but it is Melvin who benefits the most. How he grows, and what he learns from that encounter, are what makes this film worth viewing. Thanks to his opportunity, Melvin doesn't just go out to dinner, but learns to take control of his life. It is a very subtle story, but worthy of critical attention.