Whenever he deferred to melodramatic devices in the play, and he did minimally, as in the shooting scene, the result is incongruous.

Lumet's tempo and staging are just realistic enough to allow you to resent him for melodramatic devices that slicker directors get away with.

Although the book is somewhat predictable, Bayard notes that "Grisham swerves clear of the usual melodramatic devices.

Mr. McDonagh's strong suit is creating characters so vivid, unsentimental and heartbreaking that they seem undercut by his melodramatic devices, which, of course, are also part of the play's sardonically comic vision.

Over the years critics have chided Wilde for using such melodramatic devices, commonplace in the popular theater of the day, as if a playwright of his talent should be above such tricks.

As work resumed on the play, Rand's relationship with Woods quickly soured as he demanded changes that she later derided as "a junk heap of worn, irrelevant melodramatic devices".

No doubt Mr. Slatkin, who understands the Weill idiom, was worried that the dialogue, spoken over murmuring orchestral music (a terribly melodramatic device), would not be audible.

How was he to anticipate these melodramatic devices?

Even the recounting of Karen's third-trimester abortion performed by insensitive doctors feels contrived - a mere melodramatic device.

That was the reason The Shadow used the melodramatic device of the writing on the wall as well as the staining process!