Review: You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

Set in London, Anthony Hopkins and Naomi Watts play father and daughter, both unhappy in love. Hopkins leaves wife Gemma Jones for a younger hooker named Charmaine (Lucy Punch), whilst Watts’ marriage to frustrated writer Josh Brolin seems to be on the outs, as she has her eye on her charismatic boss (Antonio Banderas), and he has been spying a pretty neighbour (Freida Pinto), whilst fretting about the impending response to his latest work. Pauline Collins has an idiotic role as a shonky psychic medium who gives Jones the title prediction (groan).

 

Continuing my masochistic tour of Woody Allen (“Annie Hall”, “Deconstructing Harry”, “Match Point”, “Hannah and Her Sisters”) films, with this not terribly well publicised 2010 film from the celebrated writer-director. It’s a shockingly pointless, uninteresting film in which Woody doesn’t appear to be saying anything interesting, insightful, profound, or funny. Not a very good idea to use the ‘sound and fury, signifying nothing’ quote from Macbeth to start your film, Woody when you really are signifying nothing- and without much sound or fury to boot. It left me thinking: What the fuck was that all about? Unfortunately, I wasn’t nearly enough entertained to want to go back and see if I could figure it out. Woody seems truly lost at sea these days, extremely erratic and perhaps struggling to find a reason to keep making films. Great, so stop then! A great cast (and Lucy Punch) is not very well served here at all.

 

The film begins, as many Woody films do, with an old standard, this time a godawful version of the classic ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’, which immediately got me offside with the film. Don’t fuck with Jiminy Cricket, Woody. Just don’t. We’re then expected to accept Josh Brolin as a one-hit wonder writer. I didn’t buy him as a writer at all. He seems a bit too brawny to be a writer, somehow. Maybe it’s because the film I most associate him with is still “The Goonies”. If Brolin is meant to be the film’s middle-aged Woody surrogate, it’s poor casting. The annoyingly ironic New York accented narrator isn’t much better, either. Brolin does get one absolutely brilliant line- the only decent line in the entire film- ‘I believe you will meet the same tall, dark stranger that we all eventually meet’. Anthony Hopkins can be hit-and-miss, but he’s very rarely dull. So his work here joins the interminably funereal “Meet Joe Black” in that magical feat of tediousness. Much more acceptable and interesting are Naomi Watts and especially Antonio Banderas, who are well-cast and charismatic. Watts looks especially lovely here, but she nor Banderas can escape the fact that these are uninteresting and unlikeable characters in a film that is making clichéd and simplistic points. As soon as we see that Anthony Hopkins (looking rather fit. Must be the t-shirt) has left his wife for a bimbo half his age, we know the point being made. It was old thirty years ago, Woody. The fact that anyone would leave anyone for Lucy Punch, an actress who looks like an explosion at a plastic surgeon’s operating room, is the icing on the cake. Sorry, nice girl I’m sure, but very, very weird-looking to be playing someone that is in a profession where they get paid to have sex. The cartoon-featured Punch’s ditzy bimbo act is far too superficial (pardon the pun) and caricatured for someone of Mr. Allen’s esteem. It also doesn’t fit in with the rest of the film, which is more serious. How bad is she? She seems to be doing a Sally Hawkins impersonation, which combined with everything else I already hate about Lucy Punch, is pretty much my worst fucking nightmare (Bizarre fact: IMDb states Nicole Kidman was originally cast in the role. How the hell do you go from Kidman to Punch?). Woody has seriously weird taste in women and it affects the logic in his films. “Celebrity” had Lilith Crane cast as a hooker, and Kenneth Branagh cheating on Amy Irving with Judy Freakin’ Davis! But it’s absolutely insane that Brolin is married to the beautiful Naomi Watts, but is distracted by another woman (the lovely but bland Freida Pinto), and also thinks Lucy Punch is a ‘hot little number’. WHAT? I could understand someone being attracted to a person with a great personality and average looks, that’s perfectly normal. I can even see Punch being someone’s ‘type’, not everyone likes a classically beautiful or drop-dead sexy girl, so I’m not merely being insulting. But Punch’s character is a caricatured bimbo who is clearly self-absorbed from the get-go. Combined with her plastic surgery nightmare visage (what was that I said about not being insulting?), it just doesn’t work. The girl (a great person in real-life, I’m sure) is tragically miscast. By the way, is it just me or is this review every bit as misogynistic as people tend to criticise Woody Allen’s films for being? Unintended irony FTW!

 

I’m sorry, but this is terribly boring stuff and only mildly less pretentious than the supremely overrated “Midnight in Paris”. The characters have no personality, nothing interesting to say, and the plot is clichéd and trite. Is this really all there is? Acting talent and charisma just aren’t enough to get this one even close to average. Meanwhile, having the talented Anthony Hopkins act out a Viagra joke isn’t as bad as the banana scene from “Celebrity”, but it’s still juvenile and beneath Hopkins’ talents. That said, I don’t blame the guy for needing some outside help to inspire him into arousal when with Lucy Punch.

 

No, I didn’t get anything much out of this one at all, and unlike some Woody apologists out there, I very much doubt pointlessness was the intention (Seriously, if you want to have a really good laugh, read some of the more forgiving reviews of this film online. It’s terrific sarcastic entertainment). When Woody Allen makes a film with Anthony Hopkins, Naomi Watts, Antonio Banderas, and Josh Brolin and practically no one has ever heard of it- Beware! When it takes until 2013 for a Woody Allen film with that cast to have gotten an Australian release, stay well away!

 

Rating: C-