Scenes from a Mall (1991)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Director Paul Mazursky is always at his best when satirizing trendy Southern California lifestyles, and he does so here from that most quintessential Southern California setting: the shopping mall, where Bette Midler and Woody Allen break up and reconcile over the afternoon of their 16th wedding anniversary. The windy script was obviously written with Allen in mind, but the New York comedian is just as clearly out of his element playing a nouveau-riche, pony-tailed attorney with a taste for sushi and frozen yogurt. The sheer novelty value of such unlikely miscasting is irresistible, especially with the typically neurotic Allen paired (for once) against a co-star as extroverted as Midler, more or less reprising her role from Mazursky's 'Down and Out in Beverly Hills' (1986). But the film never rises to the laugh-riot level expected from the talent involved: it's a claustrophobic, one-act, two-character comedy, no less thin and shallow than the LA culture it mocks, and often pointless except as a vehicle for its two bankable stars. Imagine the film with two unknown actors in the same roles, and it all but disappears off the screen.

This is a "comedy" that pairs two of the funniest, fieriest Jewish comedians alive. It is about a bickering married couple that works out all their marital problems during a trip to the mall. Sounds great! Get to work. Wait. What is this? This is crap! Fix it! What? You can't? You already filmed it with a second-rate crew in just the past couple of days? What the hell is wrong with you?!I can understand it if Paul Mazursky wasn't as successful as one would think with this film because he didn't want to make the screwball comedy that everyone would expect, but what is so pathetic about this is that there are many moments where the film truly does believe it is being funny, such as the scenes with the irritating mime.Like most modern marriages, after about half an hour you might really want to reconsider your vows with this film, because although it starts blandly enough, you still feel that you can expect the laughs to start piling up, but they never ever do. Not once. Bette and Woody aren't even very good. What do they have with which to work? They can't spark off of one another in spite of generally giving as much as they can to these two-dimensional characters.Overall, this is quite an unnecessary film, a contrived effort to cash in, but with no juices at all except the anticipation of having Bette and Woody in the same film. It's almost unbelievable how bad it is. I understand if one does not trust the almost unanimous bashing this film gets until one actually sees it, because I am guilty of this. Woody Allen, as a writer and director, has never made a bad film. Even his worst film is twice as good if not more than this waste of talent.

Well-regarded director Paul Mazursky's one joke film, "Scenes From a Mall", is a hopeless going nowhere comedy that only succeeds in making one yawn. The unoriginal, predictable script from Mazursky and co-writer Roger L. Simon manages but a few laughs, while the unlikely characters fail to generate any sympathy.This is not a memorable performance from the Divine Miss 'M' either, and while Woody Allen does okay, neither one of them create believable characters. Obviously Woody is better doing his own brand of dry, observational humour while Bette Midler has been better in dozens of other movies. Give this "scene" a miss!Saturday, February 22, 1992 - Video

I happened to rent Scenes From A Mall one time at a video store. The box made it look hilarious and I thought how could you beat a couple like Midler and Allen? But then I popped it into the VCR and was very disappointed. It dragged, it was incoherent, and an 87 minute movie made it seem like three hours. Midler and Allen go to a mall somewhere in L.A. for a wedding anniversary, while they are there Allen confesses to Midler that he has been having an affair with another woman. Midler then wants to file for a divorce but soon confesses to Allen that she has had an affair with another man. It is not a bad storyline but it just drags and leads to nowhere. The profanity level and sexual content is also unnecessary. I would say if you want to experience something like this go spend 87 minutes in a mall. But don't watch this because you will be very disappointed. It is a very unnecessary film.