You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

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$6.75 ticket on a scale of $0 to $13.50

ALLEN DISAPPOINTS FOR THE FIRST TIME

Anyone who has paid significant attention to the output of Woody Allenas a writer, actor, and director, must understand that the Rosetta Stone of his films is “Annie Hall,” the 1977 pic co-starring Diane Keaton and Tony Roberts (with a host of “never-before-seen-soon-to-be-big-name” actors in walk-ons).  Every one of Allen’s themes, just about, is found there, exaggerated beyond the point of farce.  Pic benefitted from Ralph Rosenblum’s cold machete.  Thirty-three years later the jokes still are funny.

Allen explored some of the themes in later films, such as “Manhattan” (1979), “Hannah and Her Sisters” (1986), “September” (1987), “Crimes and Misdemeanors” (1989), and “Husbands and Wives” (1992) and perhaps most notably and comically in the underrated “Deconstructing Harry” (1997).

In “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger,” (title is a joke about bogus psychics) Allen returns to his existentialist mode.  It is almost as if pic’s characters were the Coney Island bumper cars of “Annie Hall.” They move about in a sort of Brownian motion but never achieve much except by accident.

Pic has two problems.  One, Allen has set his own bar too high.  If anyone else had directed it, it would have got at least another star.  Two, he hammers home his theme instead of seducing auds into buying it.

“Crimes and Misdemeanors” is a dark melodrama about morality, the ultimate futility of humanity, and the overriding need to ignore the futility and put one’s best foot forward.  If one had to move through an arc of Allen’s work, a thematic progression from “Crimes and Misdemeanors” to “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger” is evident.

Unlike the former, which boasts even sympathetic bad guys such as blinded Rabbi Ben (Sam Waterston), crooked brother and hit-man Jack Rosenthal (in a scene stealing performance by the late Jerry Orbach), Martin Landauas the murderous Judah Rosenthal, and even Allen, himself, as conflicted documentarian Cliff Stern, “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger” has absolutely no one in the cast with whom auds can empathize.

Woody Allen probably knows more about making movies than anyone alive today.  He may well be the most accomplished filmmaker of a generation.  That he would release a picture without a single sympathetic character amazes your critic.  True, in some situations in real life there are no good guys.  But movies are not real life.  They are designed to tug at our heartstrings or scare us or thrill us or make us feel good or call us to action. “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger” does none of these.

Instead, pic, set in London, takes a bunch of interpersonal conflicts with which Allen has already dealt over a grand career, throws them into a soup, and stirs.  The cast excels with performances that range from broad to nuanced.  Comic relief in this melodrama is everywhere. Unfortunately it is only the jokes that hold one’s interest.

Pic opens with Helene (Gemma Jones) visiting a bogus psychic following a messy split with husband Alfie (Anthony Hopkins), who, thanks to voiceover narration, we learn has had a mid-life crisis and pursues a Quixotic campaign to reclaim his lost youth.  Their daughter, Sally (Naomi Watts) is married to one-hit novelist Roy (Josh Brolin) who has designs on Dia (Freida Pinto), the Indian girl in the window across the street.  Dia is engaged to be married to a fellow Indian.

Helene is also supporting Roy and Sally.  Sally works for art dealer Greg (Antonio Banderas), on whom she develops a crush, and Roy works as a chauffer, a job which ends when he falls asleep at the wheel. Unfortunately for Roy, a medical school graduate, he also has writers’ block.  Sally wants a family.  She also wants a husband who is not a deadbeat.  Helene is constantly around to irritate.

Pic’s ostensible plot is de-coupling and re-coupling:  Helene with occult bookstore owner Jonathan (Roger Ashton-Griffiths), a recent widower who has trouble getting over his late wife; Roy with Dia, much to her family’s dismay; Alfie with a call girl, Charmaine, played by Lucy Punch. Pic’s every relationship is a loose end, save one.  The two delusional oldsters, Helene and Jonathan, both hooked on séances and the occult, seem to be a pair.  That’s Allen’s way of expressing the notion that only idiots can be truly happy, no matter how they mess up the lives of others.

To Allen’s credit (he both wrote and directed) Roy’s loose end, which could have been pic’s climactic scene if the veteran filmmaker had not put substance ahead of laughs, is classic shaggy-dog.  Pic’s 98 minutes are rated R.  There is some sex, some drug use, and a few naughty words, but none of it is offensive.

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You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger on Netflix