Sunday, October 24, 2010

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

Movie name: You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
Year of release: 2010
Director: Woody Allen
Stars: Naomi Watts, Anthony Hopkins, Gemma Jones, Josh Brolin, Freida Pinto, Antonio Banderas, Pauline Collins, Lucy Punch, Ewen Bremmer, Anna Friel, Meera Syal, Roger Ashton-Griffiths
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 5

Synopsis:Woody Allen as usual comes out with a film every year. "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger" was shot in London and has a fantastic cast, another staple of any Woody Allen film. However, another staple of his career lately is the meager results that the film has.
The film follows different couples and their relationship entanglements. There's Helena and Alfie who after 40 years of marriage have divorced. Helena is desperate and has a nervous breakdown. She turns to the advice of a psychic in the hopes she will tell her what her future holds. Helena and Alfie have a daughter, Sally, who married an American with a degree in medicine but who decided to become a full time writer, without much success. Into this equation comes Sally's new boss, an art gallery owner with whom she becomes infatuated and Dia, a beautiful young woman who moves across Sally and Roy's apartment and with whom he becomes enamored. All these crossings of different paths have unexpected results in the lives of all these characters.
Woody Allen as usual focus on a microcosms of characters to dwell on the meaning of relationships and lately on the meaning of mortality. Sadly though, this plot and story feel like something he has done before with a more incisive bite and meaning. Lucy Punch's character feels like Mira Sorvino's character (Linda Ash) from "Mighty Aphrodite", whereas Anthony Hopkins' character feels a bit like Martin Landau's character from "Crimes and Misdemeanors". The problem with the film is the lack of depth or wit for that matter - there are moments of insight and a lot of it is brought by the quality of the actors, namely Anthony Hopkins, Gemma Jones and Naomi Watts, but they barely scratch the surface and by the time they do, the film is over. This decade has definitely been a difficult one for Woody Allen - from all of his production, "Match Point" is possibly the only film to deserve to be part of his best ones yet. A missed opportunity.

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