A missed opportunity

So, here it is: Woody Allen’s 40th feature-length film – a director/writer so gifted that he can somehow manage to churn out one film every year. With You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Allen once again finds himself in London, and is surrounded by sad, unfulfilled characters going through their own versions of an existential crisis. Though all this sounds like the common, perhaps over-used themes central to Woody Allen films, he introduces something new here – juggling with the idea of faith and the supernatural.

Helena (Gemma Jones) is a fidgety, insecure divorcee who is struggling to cope with the fact that her husband Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) left her for a much younger, hotter blonde, Charmaine (Lucy Punch). She finds consolation in a psychic, Cristal (Pauline Collins), who is quite obviously a fraud. Though oddly sympathetic at times, Cristal only says what Helena wants to hear, most probably to hold on to her client. Helena’s daughter Sally and her husband Roy (Josh Brolin) have tension of their own: Roy, a one-hit author, has the writer’s block and Sally is finding it hard to make ends meet. She takes up a job as the assistant of a handsome gallery owner, Greg (Antonio Banderas) and, as her attentions start to be drawn towards her boss, so too does Roy begin to look elsewhere. Opposite their flat, young musicologist Dia (Freida Pinto) sparks his interest. What starts off as an innocent flirtation soon develops with the growing strain in Roy’s marriage driving him more and more towards Dia’s direction.

What his latest lacks is the outstanding humour that made the made his previous works unique and charming

Allen’s later works have not been met with the rave critical interest that his earlier, sharper efforts were. He disappoints again with this film, because what his latest lacks is the outstanding humour that made the made his previous works unique and charming. The name Woody Allen on a poster promises a quirky romantic comedy so when the script comes up short, there is bound to be disappointment. It’s not completely devoid of humour – whenever Jones is on screen she is delightful but, with characters set out as thoroughly miserable and a lack of development to push them quite beyond that point, the film falls rather flat.

Case in point: Alfie is taken by Charmaine, most possibly for her looks, but her one-dimensional personality does little else but prompt disbelief that anyone could be stupid enough to be attracted to this exaggerated, selfish bimbo. Absolutely no effort seems to have been put in to widening the range of her emotions – she’s just a slut. Their little “affair” becomes hard to believe and means hardly anything.

Allen has once again assembled a star-packed ensemble that any director would die to work with. Banderas is one smooth-talking foreign boss; Brolin and Watts do long-standing resentment well; Hopkins cannot be faulted as the old man with the absurd wish to take back his youth; and Punch provides some off-beat, albeit slightly repetitive comedy. The one stand-out here, however, is Jones, and it comes as no surprise that there were talks of getting an Oscar campaign going for the Brit actress.

Despite the potential in its impeccable cast, nothing startlingly new is explored here – even the themes of the human psyche and afterlife remain deeply uninteresting and, although necessary for some of his characters, the film suffers from a scattered focus. It’s an ensemble piece for sure, with different characters interlinking into each other’s lives; they do collide, but to with underwhelming results. The cast may be incredible in general, but even they cannot bring to life the unsure, uneven script without turning some of its content into a series of uninvolving sequences.

It’s a missed opportunity, but not a complete waste of time. The many wordy scenes that rely purely on the talent of its cast work to its best possible standard, and we should be grateful that everyone is capable of handling the dialogue with no awkward moments. You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger is not one of his more engaging late works, and certainly doesn’t measure up to some of his past classics. But thanks to Allen’s uncanny eye for casting and his ability to get some of the best actors in the industry to sign up for his films, this London-based rom-com is worth a look for any Woody Allen fans.