Review: You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

Why do I let myself believe in Woody Allen anymore? I see a movie of his and am unimpressed, and then someone talks me into seeing another one, and I get my hopes up that this one will finally be up to the standard he maintained through, say, the early 1990s. And then my hopes are shattered and it takes another two or three Woody Allen films before I will try again and be disillusioned. The last film of his that I liked was Scoop, which my husband persuaded me to see (and it took some persuading).

Now we have You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, which opens today at the Arbor, with a splendid cast and an intriguing title and other reviews (from cities where it opened earlier) proclaiming that although old-fashioned, it is one of the best Woody Allen movies in possibly a decade, and so my hopes were raised and one more time, they were dashed. You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger was tedious, tired, unbelievable and rarely amusing, with a rather unsatisfying ending. Woody, you tease.

The movie has an ensemble cast with several stories entwined, providing an excellent opportunity to sigh over the wide range of acting talent wasted in this film. Helena (Gemma Jones) is at the center of the London-based action, an older woman who has started visiting a "fortune teller" after psychiatry failed to help her deal practically with her husband Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) leaving her. Helena also enlists the fortune teller to attempt to see the future in regards to her daughter Sally (Naomi Watts), who is an assistant to art gallery owner Greg (Antonio Banderas), and Sally's husband Roy (Josh Brolin), who can't seem to sustain his career as a novelist.

Of course, the soothing soothsayer predicts only good things for Helena, although her comments on the rest of the family are not nearly as optimistic, and hearing these predictions drives Sally and Roy crazy. Roy distracts himself by watching a lovely young women, Dia (Frida Pinto) whose window is across the courtyard from his. Meanwhile, Alfie has decided to marry the young blonde ex-hooker Charmaine (Lucy Punch) and that's not working out for him nearly as well as he'd imagined. Nearly all the characters in You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger find themselves pulled into difficult situations, which the film sets up in a way that expects a tidy last-minute payoff ... that never happens. Suddenly it's all over, with real resolution for only a single one of the main characters. I realize this imitates life, but it doesn't imitate good filmmaking.

The most annoying aspect of You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger is the voiceover narration from Zak Orth, who is not otherwise a character in the film. I hate, I mean I really despise, a narrator who has to tell us every little thing that's going on. Shut up, mister, and let us figure it out for ourselves. The narrator brings nothing to the film but irritation. The writing style of the narration is similar to that of Radio Days, but at least that narration was the point of view of a character looking back at his childhood, and it was all part of the nostalgia vibe. It doesn't help that Orth sounds like a weak solution of Woody Allen himself.

I expected a comedy, but this movie is more like a mild drama, with the occasional fitful laugh. It's also an unbelievable drama. Helena continually walks into her daughter's house without phoning and proceeds to stand there recounting her sessions with the fortune teller (whom I keep wanting to call a psychic, but the film itself never does so). Sally and Roy snap at her but never ask her to leave, never try to change the subject, never engage with her. In the last scene Sally and Helena have together, Sally's dialogue rings terribly false ... but so does much of the dialogue in the film. Who are these people and where did they learn to communicate? One minute Roy is shirtless on the sofa with a beer, the next he's quoting literature that escapes awkwardly from his mouth -- frankly, as though scripted.

It is a pleasure to watch actors like Gemma Jones and Anthony Hopkins, who manage to rise above the material, but it's still difficult to engage with their characters. Antonio Banderas doesn't get much to do -- I was hoping he'd be the title "tall dark stranger," frankly -- but at least he's better than he was in Take the Lead, and if nothing else, provides some lovely eye candy. Brolin, on the other hand, looks too uncomfortable onscreen to be as attractive as usual. Everyone else is unsympathetic, or annoying, or not much more than background noise. Admittedly it was lovely to see Christian McKay (Me and Orson Welles) in a small role as one of Roy's drinking buddies, but I was sorry his performance was lost in the mess of this movie.

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger begins with "When You Wish Upon a Star" over the standard Woody Allen credits, which always give me the cinematic feeling of comfort food. The narrator opens by quoting Shakespeare, to warn us this tale too is "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." But there was no genuine fury, no fascinating sounds ... and no comfort. The end does in fact signify nothing, except a feeling of being let down yet again.