By Scott Marks/SDUN Film Critic
“You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger”
Written and Directed by: Woody Allen
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin, Gemma Jones and Lucy Punch
Rating: 2.5 stars
After the deserved critical and box office drubbing “Whatever Works” took, Woody Allen opts for a more familiar approach. His forty-and-one-third theatrical release as a director finds Woody back in London (for the fourth time) and valiantly trying to concoct a Cockney correlative to “Husbands and Wives.”
While many of Woody’s early, funny alter egos underwent strict analysis, over the years his protagonists seem to have shifted their agents of psychic self-delusion from rich doctors to witch doctors. A medium predicts love for Tom Baxter in “The Purple Rose of Cairo.” Danny Rose’s flaky flame seeks solace in clairvoyance. Something tells me there was a fortune teller in “The Curse of the Jade Scorpion” (I couldn’t sit through it again to confirm), and the police dub the murderer in “Scoop” the “Tarot Card Killer.”
“You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger” is Woody’s definitive statement on soothsaying. Not that we needed cinematic confirmation. Woody recently told the New York Times, “To me there’s no real difference between a fortune teller or a fortune cookie and any of the organized religions. They’re all equally valid or invalid, really. And equally helpful.”
The romantic roundelay commences with psychic advice dispensed by a quack (Pauline Collins). Her prognostications soon begin disrupting the lives of a bitter divorcee, Helena (Gemma Jones), and her daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) and son-in-law Roy (Josh Brolin). Alfie (Anthony Hopkins brilliantly standing in for WA without so much as a stammer) abandoned Helena in mid-mid-life crisis and married Charmaine (Lucy Punch), the first hooker/retired porn star looking for a sugar daddy to come his way. A little Lechter (and a lot of Woody) emerges as Alvy…I mean Alfie blames his ex for allowing herself to get old.
Roy despises his mother-in-law with a near-Ralph Kramden intensity. The med school grad who became a one-hit novelist is deep in the throes of writer’s block and Helena’s constant unannounced appearances are driving him batty. In order to take the pressure off their marriage, Sally purposely sends mom to a psychic she knows is a fraud. Woody actually borrows a page from Bobcat Goldthwaite’s “World’s Greatest Dad” in order to help the struggling author’s career. Roy decides to peddle a deceased friend’s manuscript as his own.
After years of aping Bergman and Fellini, Woody booked passage to England and entered his Hitchcock phase. “Cassandra’s Dream,” a Hitchcockian thriller about a pair of brothers and a crime gone wrong, turned out to be Woody’s strongest directorial effort since “Crimes and Misdemeanors.” He still can’t quite shake The Master’s influence. Roy begins a voyeuristic rear-window romance with his beautiful, soon-to-be wed neighbor (Freida Pinto).
Lucy Punch’s Charmaine acts as a dual reference to characters past. Her exterior may be a lot more curvaceous, but Punch’s brash, outgoing trophy gal basically serves the same function as Maureen Stapleton’s Pearl in “Interiors.” Both characters add life (and in Stapleton’s case, color) and upset the balance of the otherwise serious proceedings.
Charmaine is the direct descendant of many a Woody bimbo. Remember Miss Blair, the conniver with the sugar cone bra in Woody’s debut feature “Take the Money and Run”? Move over Countess Alexandrovna, Tina Vitale, Rain, Olive Neal, Erin Fleming and all the other mighty Aphrodites that populate Allenland. A mighty Punch now comes close to topping the list.
The one character that fails to register is Josh Brolin’s frustrated novelist. From a tousled, unbecoming shag cut to his beefy presence and sluggish line readings, Brolin’s performance appears to have been grafted on from another film. Why didn’t Woody cast Christian McKay (“Me and Orson Welles”) in the lead as opposed to assigning him a thankless role as one of Roy’s chums?
With the reprise of Leon Redbone’s “When You Wish Upon a Star” it is abruptly made clear that our story is about to wrap. It appears the old boy’s heart isn’t in it. God bless prolific Woody for averaging a film a year since first stepping behind the camera in 1968. It’s clear that quantity has never been one of his problems. Maybe the 74-year-old nebbish should slacken his pace to three films every four years and concentrate more on pulling together loose threads. “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger” begins with an anonymous narrator quoting “Macbeth.” Regrettably, by the time Woody’s sound and fury draws to a close he idiotically fails to signify anything.
Please silence your guns and cell phones
It’s a good thing they don’t let people bring guns into movie theaters. If they did, the screen I saw “Hook” on would have had more holes in it than the plot of a “Bourne” sequel.
While heading to the ‘Bucks to get a cup of morning movie stimulant, I stopped at the ticket booth to see what else was showing at the AMC Fashion Valley. (I was hoping that “Dinner for Schmucks” was being held over as an AMC Independent.) Being an old theater manager, I still feel an obligation to check out the artwork on the menu board mylars and any other offbeat signage.
What’s this??! A sign shouting “NO WEAPONS” complete with a drawing of a pistol surrounded by a circle with a line across it for illiterate gun-toters. Now I had to trudge all the way back to the parking lot, unlock my Electra 225 and stow my Walther PPK in the glove box.
It makes all the sense in the world to post a “No Weapons” sign at Horton Plaza (they sell mace at the concession stand), but Fashion Valley? AMC’s Fashion Valley 18 was built before its sister theater, Mission Valley 20. As soon as the bigger, newer theater was erected in 1995, FV basically became a receptacle for MV’s spillover. It’s your typical efficient, non-imposing mall theater. The only trouble I ever encountered at FV was when I threatened to set fire to some old honey’s Depends® if she continued talking.
Screening audiences are accustomed to being wanded down before entering an auditorium to make sure they are not carrying any photographic devices. Are we soon going to have to walk through metal detectors in order to see Hollywood’s latest offerings? Looks like this new wave of 3D audience participation is bound to be more exciting than anything on the screen.
