@elliotthomas97 said:

Just finished watching this disappointing film. Most of the time I was thinking about my favourite Allen films (in which he wrote, directed and sometimes starred in). I usually divide his career into four categories/decades with two favourites from each; 1970s (ANNIE HALL, MANHATTAN), 1980s (HANNAH AND HER SISTERS, CRIMES & MISDEMEANORS), 1990s (DECONSTRUCTING HARRY, HUSBANDS AND WIVES) and 2000s (MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, BLUE JASMINE). A lot of people can't stand him, but he has some body of work.

Don't forget the teens, Cafe Society (2016) was splendid.

I dug what Allen was trying to capture in Scenes from a Mall. I wonder, though, if "the mall" as an icon of Americana, had already passed its zenith such that this just missed the cultural identity of what America was already becoming by the time 1991 rolled around? Movies like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, some nine years prior, really showed "the mall" in ways that just didn't happen in 1970s movies. Perhaps the most seminal teenage coming of age movie of the 70s, American Graffiti, is set in the car; Fast Times located teen angst in the mall.

But, Scenes from a Mall is not teen angst at all; it's mid-life crisis a la Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), also featuring the divine Miss M, Bette Midler. Maybe, she should have gotten SfaM done in '86 and pushed DaOiBH into '91. Either way, it's not as though a zany mid-life crisis comedy with heart featuring adults couldn't be told in the 80s - Planes, Trains and Automobiles (sans Oxford comma, but I shan't dwell on it) nailed that.

At any rate, @elliotthomas97 , what was disappointing to you about SfaM?