Once more into the breach, dear friends. Woody Allen is at it again in You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, the most recent item of evidence presented in the desperate case for his long-overdue retirement. This time the story is set in London (I guess he's finally paying attention to Manhattan's pleas to stop making movies in her) with a much too complicated ensemble-cast story.
Sally (Naomi Watts) is a woman in her 30s who lives in London with her American husband Roy (Josh Brolin). She works in an art gallery and her husband, who finished medical school but is not a doctor, is an unsuccessful novelist. They are supported by her mother, Helena (Gemma Jones), a divorced woman in her 60s who regularly goes to see a fortune teller (played by Pauline Collins) to look into the future. Her father, Alfie (Anthony Hopkins), left her mother during some sort of mid-life crisis and now is married to an ex-hooker named Charmaine (Lucy Punch).
None of them are happy with their lives and all of them are looking to improve their situations, either through sex with new people (Roy falls in love with he neighbor, played by the magnificent Freida Pinto; Sally falls in love with her boss, played by Antonio Banderas) or major career moves (Roy steals a dead friend's book and publishes it as his own; Sally wants to open her own art gallery with a friend). I guess the inside joke in the film is that Helena is just about as overbearing as a WASP as a Jewish mother would be, were the film typically set in New York. Who cares?!
Woody has this idea that men sit around in groups at cafes, pubs and poker tables talking about stuff. This doesn't really happen. Men sit around bars or dens and watch football games, but men don't really gossip the way they do in his movies. Sometimes this construction works in his films (like in Broadway Danny Rose), but most of the time it's just dumb (like in Whatever Works or here). Beyond this, it is totally unclear why Roy lives in London and not New York. Why do we need an American in the cast at all? Having him in the story brings up more questions than it answers.
More than anything, this film is totally unmemorable and lacks any emotional or sensory connection to anything. I feel like I've seen this film six times already from Woody (Oh - a guy upset in his marriage - maybe it's Husbands and Wives, or Crimes and Misdemeanors, or Match Point - ugh).
The film has no style to is and the script is just recycled. At times I feel that he makes movies as an excuse to work with talented actors he hasn't worked with before (like Freida Pinto or Pauline Collins). But I wish he would either write better material for them or hold off on making two movies a year to make a great movie and really show off the actors' abilities. This is not a movie that I was begging for him to make. I've already almost totally forgotten I saw it.
Stars: 2 of 4
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I only take issue with your claim that men don't sit around and shoot the s**t a la Diner and Woody Allen and Tarantino movies. We've done it ourselves! But the film is utterly without merit if not hateful. Just depressing in its familiarity.
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