Rating: 
Summary: Great Fun
Review: I liked this movie. Allen's writing is "tip top" and his interaction with Keaton is great. As I watched this movie, I kept thinking about Annie Hall. The two leads play well off each other and the co-stars are just as great. Alan Alda and Anjelica Houston are fabulous. It was a romp and I am going to buy this video for my Woody Allen collection. This is up there with Bullets Over Broadway. Both movies also have great jazz . . . alot of the 1920s type jazzy music. I love it and would recommend this movie as one of his best.
Rating:
Summary: AN ENTERTAINING MURDER COMEDY
Review: I was highly entertained by this little "murder comedy" set in the Big Apple. The spontaneous acting style is refreshing and I enjoyed every performance: Allen fun as his neurotic self who slowly begins to believe what his wife Keaton and her friend Alda suspected all along: that their neighbor bumped - off his wife (suspicions arose when the neighbor showed no remorse or "mourning" after her "death".) Diane Keaton is absolutely astonishing in the fun-loving naturalness of her playing and Anjelica Huston was terrific in her role as the wise gal who sizes the case up in a nutshell.
Rating:
Summary: Woody meets Hitch
Review: If Woody Allen had made "Rear Window", this would have been the result. The formula and structure is strikingly similar: Allen and Keaton star as a couple who have come to something of a stalemate in their marriage. She is adventurous; he, a neurotic (unsurprisingly), is patently not. When she becomes convinced that a neighbour is responsible for the death of his wife ("Who?" asks Woody, "You mean our next-door widower?"), she sets off on a daring Hitchcockian quest to uncover the truth, ending in the solution of a puzzling mystery that brings the two opposites back together.For wit and brilliance, Woody Allen is on top form. This is laugh-a-minute stuff. Along with Deconstructing Harry, this may well be one of Allen's best films of the '90s.
Rating:
Summary: Witty screenplay, terrific chemistry between Allen - Keaton
Review: If you're a Woody Allen fan, Manhattan Murder Mystery is as comfortable as an old shoe. Every time it plays on TV I find myself watching it-I've probably seen it, oh, six or seven times now-even though it's not Allen's best. Best, for me, are notable Allen films from the 70's: Annie Hall(1977), Love and Death (1975), Sleeper (1973), and Manhattan (1979). Manhattan Murder Mystery is a notch or two below those terrific works-but it's still worth watching. Originally, Mia Farrow was to star opposite Allen, but...well, you know the story. The two broke up (very publicly) and Allen-who likes to work with familiar faces-turned to his prior leading lady, Diane Keaton. Manhattan Murder Mystery also reunites Allen with writer Marshall Brickman (the two share screenwriting credit here as they did on Annie Hall and Manhattan). Like those films, this one contains some very funny one-liners. I also liked the whole set up (the murder mystery of the title). And there's terrific chemistry between Allen and Keaton, who play sort of grown up versions of their roles in Annie Hall. I really enjoyed the back-and-forth between Allen and Keaton. Allen plays Larry Lipton and Keaton plays his wife Carol. He's a book editor at Harper's and she's looking to open a little restaurant ("basically French, although international cuisine would be fine"). They live in Manhattan and have a grown son in college. Their marriage is comfortable, but Carol feels Larry's become rather stodgy and fears turning into "a dull, aging couple" like the older couple in the apartment down the hall. Early on they spend an evening visiting this couple and are then surprised when a day or so later the wife turns up dead. It's deemed a "classic coronary", but Carol becomes suspicious of the husband (played by Jerry Adler), who seems "a little too perky." On a subsequent visit to offer condolences she stumbles upon an urn in his kitchen and recalls an earlier conversation where the widower's wife had talked about twin cemetery plots. So why then does it appear he had his wife cremated? Right from the beginning Larry doesn't buy into her suspicions. But an old friend Ted (Alan Alda)-a recent divorcé who has a thing for Carol-goads her into thinking that maybe their neighbor killed his wife. A few scenes later Carol actually breaks into this guy's apartment looking for clues a la Hitchcock's Rear Window. Larry thinks she's nuts, but she feels he's being a fuddy-dud-that it was a cinch to get the key from the super-and she has caught the widower in yet another lie. He's not going snorkeling with his brother in Florida-as he previously told them-but instead has tickets for two to Paris. The mystery gets even more complicated and I don't want to give much away because there's some fun surprises. Part of that fun involves Anjelica Huston, who plays Marcia Fox, a "dangerously sexual" novelist who has a thing for Woody Allen's character. To deflect her advances, Woody sets her up with Alan Alda because deep down he really loves his wife and he doesn't want to mess that up, although the movie plays with the notion that the two are growing bored with each other-that they might both be attracted to other people. It's the murder mystery that adds some juice to their marriage. At least that's the way Carol sees it: "Look, Larry," she says, "we've got plenty of time to be conservative. You know what I'm saying...it's like this tantalizing plum has just, like dropped into our laps. I mean, life is just such a dull routine and here we are, right? I mean, we're on the threshold of a genuine mystery." As Manhattan Murder Mystery winds down, the one-liners fly fast and furious. But I also appreciated how the movie very subtly recalls Annie Hall with a reference to Wagner. The two of them have this arrangement: she'll sit through an ice hockey game if he'll watch an entire Wagner opera. She fulfills her part of the bargain, but-as a Jew-he has a problem upholding his side ("I can't listen to that much Wagner, you know; I start to get the urge to conquer Poland"). In Annie Hall Allen was convinced that the record store salesman-a big, tall, blonde guy with a crew-cut-was trying to tell him something when he announced the store had a sale on Wagner ("So I know what he's really tryin' to tell me very significantly Wagner"). In Manhattan Murder Mystery he's still that same insecure guy-a little older, but still defensive and neurotic. There's something comforting about that.
Rating: 
Summary: Allen's style of mystery
Review: Manhattan Murder Mystery - however, nothing is mysterious. The movie does not create an atmosphere of suspense, but it swells with Woody Allen's style of neurotic representation of dialogues. The spontaniety of talking totally destroys the so-called 'mysterious spots' of the movie. As a super Woody Allen fan, I am rather disappointed of it.
Rating: 
Summary: One of Woody's best
Review: My wife loves to watch this film over and over. It's like a cult film for her. And I watch it with her because it never gets old. Woody is brilliant once again and the jokes keep coming at a furious pace. I highly recommend this film.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Woody Movie for non-Woody fans
Review: Okay, I love Woody Allen, but this movie is funny even if you're not a fan. My one-liner plot summary: Larry (Woody Allen) and Carol Lipton (Diane Keaton) suspect their neighbor may have murdered his wife one night, so Carol sets out to discover the truth aided by Ted (Alan Alda) and Larry turns to Marsha (Angelica Huston) for help since he suspects his wife and Ted are having an affair. The typical brand of humor is here, along with enough tension and subplots to keep the non-Allen fans interested, not to mention the strong supporting roles played by Huston and Alda. Great New York City locations, great music, and I have to thank Woody for introducing me to no less than three other brilliant movies from within Manhattan Murder Mystery. There's a scene from Double Indemnity here, a long-sequence from Orson Welles--The Lady From Shanghai (which took me months to figure out), as well as brief mention of the movie, Last Year at Marienbad--a wonderful French, arthouse movie from the 60's. Recommend this film and all three of these mentioned!
Rating:
Summary: NYC caper
Review: Pleasant enough film with Diane Keaton. Perhaps not as funny as his earlier films (to paraphrase the 'aliens' in "Stardust Memories") but certainly fun to watch. Alda quite good - as he was in Allen's superior "Crimes and Misdemeanors."
Rating: 
Summary: Ugh! (can we go to Elaine now??, a table awaits...)
Review: The cinematic equivalent of FLAT champagne. Tiresome rather than funny or mysterious. And unusual for Allen films, the photography is undistinguished. Ms. Keaton is lit to resemble a leper. The beginning of THE END for Woody, creatively. At least Crimes and Misdemeanors (which I loathed) had a germ of an idea behind it, stale as it was. MMM was the first real indication that the well had run dry; Allen's uninterrupted string of awful recent films only confirms this. Failing miserably even as a pastiche, MMM apparently doesn't seem like such an insult to younger, immature viewers who've never seen the Welles and Hitchcock films that Woody deigns to pilfer. I enjoyed Anjelica Huston --she gets to show some SASS --and she was all I enjoyed in this thin visit to the glue factory. Is Woody's latter-day post-Mia career "the horror, the horror" that Colonel Kurtz was talking about?
Rating:
Summary: Trite and unfunny...if that is you you will ove this film
Review: This is just [bad] and lazy. The work of a once (and probably still) talented man who decided to absent himself from his home and his work...He deserved to have a break but didn't need to pin us down with the dumb reslult. Still...if you can enjoy...race off to Elaines after and have fun! or six or seven martinis.
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