Review of You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010) by Parker M — 24 Oct 2010

2.5 Stars out of 4.

Could we believe that all these characters in You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger (to paraphrase Will Shakespeare) find life to be full of sound and fury, but in the end signifying nothing? Some like Helena (Gemma Jones) are content with that uncanny feeling that love will emerge from the darkness, out of a magical box and be rather meaningful. Others seem to reject this supernal serendipity and frustrate their relationships to the point that a new love would be the best medicine.

Cue the Woody Allen music, the classic credits, and slashingly cynical one-liners. You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger is every frame a Woody Allen, but it does wrong what many of his great movies do right: it uses circumstance as a catalyst but never allows itself to unfold through character choice and consequence.

The scenarios are there, but they seem to be extracted from Woody Allen cereal boxes. You have the once-in-love-now-in-hate couple Sally (Naomi Watts) and Roy (Josh Brolin), a respectable writing having trouble publishing his latest novel. Helena, the wide-eyed, casual-drinking mother of Sally who is obsessed with the guidance of a fortune teller (Pauline Collins).

Her ex-husband Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) piles up on Viagra and marries a floozy - or an expired Hollywood actress (Lucy Punch, originally to be played by Nicole Kidman), a caricature screenwriter Ben Hecht defined as "any woman under 30 who is not actively employed in a brothel, with many exceptions." Of course she's a prostitute, perhaps a gold digger, under the wing of poor Alfie whose ignorance stifles his ability to distinguish love from nether stimulation.

Who are these 'tall dark strangers'? The title itself has the tone of prediction, hopefulness, yet a little foreboding. These strangers could be the escape, the perfect match, or something the furthest thing from those. Helena crushes not on a tall-dark stranger but a short-stout bookshop owner named Jonathan (Roger Ashton-Griffiths). For Helena, he's not a Prince Charming, but their supernatural faith is quixotic yet comforting for each other.

You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger has the charm, wit, and tenor of Woody Allen, but every scene acts like chunks to a block then effortlessly forming a whole piece altogether. Every event that takes place is so satisfied by its circumstantial existence that it never develops into something plausible and tightly knit. When the characters are exposed to love and temptation the script feels forced rather than natural.

Two precise examples: Sally finds an attraction to her new boss Greg (Antonio Banderas) - I mean, it's Banderas the casting choice itself gives her the right. But of course when things begin to heat up Greg asks Sally to the opera, in which obviously sparks will at least almost fly. A second scenario involves Roy crushing on the woman across the window - Dia (Slumdog Millionaire's Freida Pinto). We are only given two scenes of window-to-window flirtations (which come in cold long shots) and one café date to assume this sudden romance, one that forces Dia to break up with her lucrative fiancée.

Allen never emphasizes consequence here. Every encounter runs on autopilot to some thinly- tied conclusion that speaks for itself instead of actually making sense vis-a-vis the characters. They perform such impulsive-audacious actions without even suggesting what compelled them to. Woody Allen creates one detrimental foil: these tall dark strangers never develop the inkling to becoming something painfully real.

Otherwise You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger is a slightly amusing Woody movie, that's appeal can only be ingratiated by those willing to forgive the film's flaws. There are many. If only when those affections predispose themselves to inflictions could we see what those were and what it all meant - at least in the classic ambiguous Woody way.

You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger falls dramatically short of Woody's best contemporary films - Match Point and Vicky Cristina Barcelona - but it still has the sly sarcasm of a gifted-neurotic director, who this time, is more keen on the arrival of the tall dark strangers than what in fact they represent. I suppose it's fitting: in itself, the movie signifies nothing.