YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER
DIRECTOR: Woody Allen
CAST: Anthony Hopkins, Gemma Jones, Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin, Antonio Banderas, Freida Pinto, Lucy Punch
RUNNING TIME: 97 minutes
CLASSIFICATION: 13 L
RATING: HHIII
Woody Allen’s spark of genius started flickering somewhere along the way of his transformation from being a filmmaker to being a genre. His once refreshing trademarks have become limp conventions. Other writers have chosen to see his latest films as more subtle and mature, but I just find them boring.
It may be a bit pretentious and not very original to be nostalgic for things before my time, but I prefer the zing of his earlier films like Annie Hall, Manhattan and Deconstructing Harry to the vanilla banality of things like Cassandra’s Dream, Scoop and Match Point.
It’s London again, which seems to have replaced New York as Allen’s favoured location. The film is populated by neurotic, generally unpleasant people with an abundance of money and looks.
There’s Alfie (Hopkins) playing the Woody Allen character; an emotionally irresponsible older man who falls for a younger woman. He falls for a pneumatic young blonde (Punch) with a spotted past, leaving his wife Helena (Jones) to seek solace in the ramblings of a crank clairvoyant.
Helena also spends her time dropping in on her daughter Sally (Watts) and her husband Roy (Brolin), whose marriage is taking strain. She wants to start a family while he just wants to write a book that’ll live up to his acclaimed debut.
Both of their gazes start wandering; hers to her handsome but married boss (Banderas) and his to their beautiful, mysterious neighbour (Freida Pinto).
The characters muddle their way through the pursuit of whatever form of happiness they think that they desire, but it’s all quite tedious as it’s so hard to care about them.
There’s a dull, predictable twist at the end which is almost as lame as Match Point’s.
Allen’s penchant for witty, sardonic one-liners can usually be relied on for some entertainment, but here they are in short supply.
Disappointing.
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