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These days, if critics are trashing a new Woody Allen film—and they generally are—it’s more than understandable. Mired in the worst (one might even say only) creative slump of his career (see Hollywood Ending for confirmation, or better yet, don’t), Allen’s output early this millennium has been unforgivably dull and interchangeable: dreary stabs at romantic comedy stocked equally with young, hip actors plucked from recent, lauded films Allen probably hasn’t seen and Z-grade gags too stale even for comedians still working the Catskills circuit. He’s proved himself so old and out of touch that there’s absolutely no reason to think a new Allen film titled Melinda and Melinda starring Radha Mitchell, Will Ferrell, and Chloë Sevigny would break free from this mold in the slightest.

Thing is—even if review after review written on autopilot hasn’t picked up on this yet—someway, somehow, Melinda and Melinda doesn’t suck. In fact, bearing in mind the diminished expectations with which one enters a Woody Allen film these days, it’s actually kind of good.

Melinda’s opening device doesn’t inspire much confidence. Dimly recalling Allen’s 1984 Broadway Danny Rose, a group of friends (including Allen regular Wallace Shawn) filter a story they’ve just heard through typically stilted late-Allen dialogue. The story’s not a happy one, but the friends quickly notice how small differences in perspective and minor tweaks of plot points can transform the same narrative from tragedy into comedy. From here, their musings bring to life two alternating stories about its titular character, played in both by Mitchell.

In the first, Melinda shows up unexpectedly at a dinner party thrown by her old friend Laurel (Sevigny) and Laurel’s husband, actor Lee (Jonny Lee Miller). Alcoholic, anorexic, and admittedly suicidal, Melinda’s life appears at first to regain some balance as she crashes at Laurel and Lee’s pad and falls for classical composer Ellis (Dirty Pretty Thing’s Chiwetel Ejiofor). However, the escalating implosion of Lee and Laurel’s relationship threatens Melinda’s nascent stability. Our second scenario reconfigures Melinda as downstairs neighbor to indie-film director Susan (Amanda Peet) and nebbishy househusband Hobie (Ferrell). Melinda announces her presence here, again during a dinner party, with a loudly botched suicide attempt. Over the following weeks, Susan takes on finding Melinda a boyfriend as her pet project—much to the chagrin of Hobie, who’s smitten with Melinda.

Both parallel narrative strands start off shaky—at first, one has to really strain to recall which is supposed to deliver laughs and which tears—but, miracle of miracles, they both improve over time. In so doing, they begin to recall that genre Allen perfected in the late ’70s through the ’80s and in which most of his best films operate: namely, neurotic dramedies examining the infidelities and neuroses of high-society Manhattanites.

There’s no mistaking Melinda for Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), however. For starters, Allen just isn’t that funny any0more. There’s certainly more humor here than in Allen’s last few (all of which, unlike Melinda, were ironically intended as full-on comedies), but that’s mostly due to Ferrell, who strikes a fine balance between aping Woody and doing his own thing. A few laughs come from scripted traits common to all Allen’s leading men—hatred of beaches, bugs, and braggarts—but just as many spring from Ferrell’s fluid gift for generating mirth with facial mannerisms, gestures, and inflections of speech, even when he’s not necessarily delivering a punch line. Don’t expect belly laughs, but this welcome infusion of new blood produces more chuckles than any Allen film since 1999’s Sweet and Lowdown.

Allen still has problems writing dialogue that feels believable for his characters, as he has since at least the early ’90s. The cultural references that dribble from Lee and Laurel’s lips, for instance, generally sound more like those of Allen himself than those of trendy thirtysomething Manhattanites. He’s also less of an actor’s director than in decades past—as in his last few films, each cast member seems to have chosen his or her own tone with little guidance. Still, Melinda abounds with winning performances, especially from Mitchell, Ferrell, and Ejiofor. Unfortunately, the fact that Ejiofor is a black man with a speaking part in a Woody Allen film will generate as much buzz as his actual performance, but that’s a whole nother can of worms.

Longtime fans take note: Even if Woody never makes another five-star movie meriting innumerable viewings, at least he’s turned in, for the first time in half a decade, a three-star movie worth sitting through once. Sigh a breath of relief, credit crucial assists to Ferrell and several cast mates, and keep your fingers crossed for another respectable effort about this time next year.