Review of You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010) by Ted N — 29 Jul 2011

Allen transplants the usual plot to London, and an amazing cast does great things. Shame though that all WA can contribute is a bleak set of interwoven tales, wherein every character gets shafted (mostly deservedly, though some more by oversight or omission than villainy). Except, that is for the two who leave reality behind completely and go to live in cloud cuckoo land. "Sometimes the illusion is better", Allen tells us.

Well, no it isn't, not even in this film. Look, dumbass, you wrote this thing. Has it escaped your attention that for all the central characters - the failed novelist with his leaden second book, his crooked attempt to steal a better writer's work, his chasing after the (improbably attractive) PhD musicology student, his self-sacrificing wife, her father with his middle-age crisis, and so on and so on - it's precisely "living in illusion" that gets them into the shit in the first place?

The soundtrack's good though.