While we always look forward to the perennial Woody Allen film, we can’t deny that his prolific output can often be hit or miss from year to year. Unfortunately, it looks like this year’s “You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger” doesn’t quite hit the mark, according to early reviews from Cannes. The London-set comedy stars Josh Brolin, Naomi Watts, Anthony Hopkins, Freida Pinto and Lucy Punch, and, despite the strong cast, apparently never quite feels complete or thorough. The press seems to have even enjoyed Allen’s post-screening press conference even more than the film itself, where, when asked about his relationship with death, he declared “I’m strongly against it.”
Variety’s Justin Chang assesses the film as mediocre and thinks it brings out the worst of Allen’s qualities. “This being an Allen picture, it’s set in a privileged fantasy world where characters pursue artistic-literary aspirations, go to the opera and make casual reference of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. It’s that curdled blend of cynicism and superiority — the safe retreat from any sort of earnest engagement or inquiry into a pseudo-intellectual cocoon — that gives ‘Stranger,’ for all its incidental amusements and visual pleasures, such a sour aftertaste.”
THR’s review pegs the film as feeling sketched out and incomplete. “Brolin, Watts and Punch all have one-note characters. The movie ends just when complications start to set in, which makes you wonder how invested Allen really is in the little melodramas within this comedy. They feel more like puppets rather than human beings with natural instincts and lucid senses… Here decisions get made off-camera or people act with an abruptness, if not a frivolity, that betrays no thought process at all.”
Jeff Wells also thinks of ‘Stranger’ as a lesser Allen work. “But it feels middling or, truth be told, minor…I don’t want to go out on a limb, but You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger doesn’t deliver my idea of what most moviegoers are looking for, or are likely to enjoy. I’d have to be goaded into seeing it again. It’s grade-C Woody….sorry.” Wells, however, does admit that even “a grade-C Woody is like a B-minus or even a B along the general curve.”
EW’s Owen Gleiberman really digs into the film, saying “[The movie] is one of Woody Allen’s “fables” — which is practically code, at this point, for the flavorless, dry- cookie thing that results when he writes and directs a comedy on autopilot. The film is notable, if that’s the word, for being the first movie Allen has made in London that is every bit as bad as his most awful New York comedies, like ‘Anything Else’ and ‘Melinda and Melinda.'” Ouch. He also particularly attacks the actors’ performances, claiming Brolin, in his attempts to fill the Allen character type, “doesn’t quite enter the make-it-stop stratosphere of whiny fumbling stuttering embarrassment, he’s still got to be the least likely actor yet to play a faux-Woody neurotic intellectual.”
Todd McCarthy evalutes ‘Stranger’ as another mid-level Allen work: “Thanks to the attractive cast and some clever scenes, it’s a notch above ‘Scoop’ and ‘Whatever Works’ among the Woodman’s recent output, but very far indeed from ‘Match Point’ and ‘Vicky Christina Barcelona.'” He also criticizes the faulty characterization and narrative of the film: “That none of these relationships is either a good idea or destined to succeed is readily apparent to anyone other than those directly involved, which stacks the deck both narratively and thematically; it mitigates against any viewer rooting interest in seeing these romances blossom even briefly and it makes all the characters into fools for wanting these mismatched mates in the first place. It’s one thing to dramatize the folly of human endeavor, but the author, who employs an omniscient narrator here to bridge some gaps, this time feels more like a vindictive Greek god having his way with some hapless mortals, or even a mean child playing cruel games with small animals.”
MovieLine, on the other hand, is not so harsh on ‘Stranger’, claiming it “added some welcome levity amid the festival’s myriad screenings involving murder, hostage standoffs, self-immolation and suicide.” They also particularly praised Hopkins’ performance, saying “The actor who gets the most laughs throughout the film, however, is the one perhaps least expected. Hopkins’s turn as a Viagra-popping, sports-car-driving gym rat and bon vivant in the midst of a end-life crisis is especially rewarding.”
AwardsDaily’s Sasha Stone seems to think the film is merely good, saying that “Allen, by contrast, is doing what he likes to do – write a movie and cast it with high-profile actors. It doesn’t NOT work, but it suffered a bit by being shown after the Mike Leigh film.” But he also suggests that it is typical enjoyable Allen fare, saying that “[The film] has the usually Woody Allen stuff about infidelity and self-deluded characters. It’s funny and more than delivers for what Allen has been known for lately: a little sex, a few laughs, and enough depth to give you something to think about later.”
Time’s Richard Corliss instead focuses on the film’s themes and characters rather than loads of qualitative judgment, if only criticizing the film as typical Allen: “From this outline you will notice a standard Allen roundelay: people obsessed with love, but with a short emotional attention span, seeking the one person they think will solve their problems… The movie is easy to take, and perceptive in men’s desires for things they can’t have. When Roy moves out of Peggy’s place and into Dia’s apartment, he now looks longingly at the new woman in the window: his estranged wife. But Tall Dark Stranger, like Another Year, shows a top film artist in a holding pattern.”
RopeOfSilicon’s Brad Bevet doesn’t find much to like about the film while still singling out and praising some of the actors’ performances: “As this convoluted web of relationships-ready-to-implode gets underway I began to lose interest as nothing all that interesting ever seems to happen. The comedy is limited to say the least, and what funny parts there are, are repeated so often they become more annoying than anything else… Brolin, Watts and Punch stand out in the film and Frieda Pinto shows some true talent in her first role since Slumdog Millionaire where she was more the mysterious, pretty newcomer.”
