Film Reviews

You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger

• Rating:
• Director: Woody Allen
• Starring: Antonio Banderas
• Details: US/Spain / 98mins (12A).

The opening narration that quotes Macbeth clues us in how this will all turn out: "life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing". That applies to this comedy-drama, except Allen forgot to include the sound and fury. Amiable and charming in places, Allen here reheats old leftovers from his superior movies. But reheated leftovers, as we know, can still be tasty.
Sally (Watts) dreams of opening her own art gallery but for now works as an assistant Greg (Banderas) whom she's falling for. Sally is married to Roy (Brolin), a writer struggling to top his hit first novel and who wiles away his days ogling Dia (Fredia Pinto). Sally's mother Helena (Gemma Jones) is teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown when her husband Alfie (Hopkins) leaves her for escort girl Charmaine (Lucy Punch) and seeks advice in the psychic Cristal (Pauline Collins). Everyone impacts on each other's lives for good and for ill.
After zipping off to Spain for Vicky Cristina Barcelona and then back to New York for Whatever Works, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger sees Allen return to the London of Match Point, Scoop and Cassandra's Dream. Here he finds the same old themes played out by the same old characters. When a new Woody Allen film appears it's immediately compared to his greats like Annie Hall or Manhattan and is invariably found wanting, but Allen at half-mast is still a lot better than most. We can be guilty of forgetting that he tackles themes other filmmakers wouldn't: Allen's characters here are driven by the fear of the great inevitable - death - but also self-delusion and the panic of failure. It's just frustrating that Allen is content to stop short at pushing his ideas to a harsher conclusion - You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger plays it safe and the end result is disposability.
Life is pointless, Allen wants to say, but in doing so renders his movie meaningless too. There are moments of greatness to be found, like when Watts awkwardly confesses her feelings for Banderas, but for the most part this busy little comedy-drama ambles along without doing all that much. There are times too that Allen succumbs to male fantasy: the beautiful Pinto wears a tight-fitting red dresses and strums an acoustic guitar by an open window. Only in a Woody Allen movie would this happen.
Brolin, Watts, Hopkins and Jones work harder than Allen, giving it socks to embody their characters as best they can. Jones in particular is the highlight: with her eyes that hint at coming tears, or tears that have just moments ago were hastily brushed away, her portrayal of a woman who is a hair's breadth from physical and mental collapse is both amusing and depressing. Kind of like the movie, then.

Review by Gavin Burke