Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) * * *

Directed by:  Woody Allen

Starring:  Diane Keaton, Woody Allen, Jerry Adler, Anjelica Houston, Alan Alda, Lynn Cohen

All Carol Lipton wants to do is figure out what her neighbor must be up to.   One day the neighbor's wife is alive and well and then the next, she's dead of a heart attack.   Her spidey senses are tingling.    She thinks the wife was murdered.    Her mind races with theories, explanations, and secret plots.   Her husband, Larry, just wants her to stop yapping so he could get some sleep.  Is Carol an empty nester who needs something to fill her days now?     Even a seemingly implausible belief that her neighbor murdered his wife?     It is not unusual for someone to be here one day and gone the next.  That is how life works.  Just don't tell that to Carol.

This is the backdrop for Manhattan Murder Mystery, one of the more purely fun films Woody Allen has made.    It is light, funny, and carries us along Carol's obsessive quest to find the truth...if there is even a truth to be found.   Sometimes a tree is just a tree, Freud said, but Carol doesn't see things that way.   She might make Agatha Christie proud, if no one else.  I'm sure Larry would be proud of her if she would slow down and relax once in a while.

Elements of Allen's original Hannah and Her Sisters and Annie Hall screenplays contained mysteries of some kind.   He brought those elements together for Manhattan Murder Mystery.   Carol and Larry are reminiscent of Annie Hall and Alvy Singer, just sixteen years down the road.    It would not be inconceivable for Annie to embark on a new adventure...solving a murder, while Alvy tries in vain to convince her she's nuts.    

The more Carol digs, though, the more things start to look hinky.   The neighbor, a big, friendly guy named Paul (Adler), seems like the last guy who would murder someone, so Carol deducts that he is exactly the guy to do it.   Like Kevin Costner said in JFK, "White is black and black is white."   
She has no proof of any wrongdoing, but she sure does have suspicions.   Scenarios rapidly pop into her head and she must share them with someone or burst.   Larry is usually the guy, but in a pinch, their mutual friend Ted (Alda) will do.  Ted is more receptive to Carol's whims and Larry believes they will fall in love.  

You would think Carol would drive the viewer batty, but as played by Diane Keaton, she is likable and we are willing to tolerate her flights of fancy.     Then again, all of her theories may eventually point to something.     Even broken clocks are right twice a day.     She and Allen fall into familiar verbal rhythms and Allenesque dialogue.    We may wind up with an answer to the question:  What did happen to Annie and Alvy after all?     She's not singing anymore and he's not doing stand-up, but they are half-decent detectives.