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Critics Consensus: It's sporadically amusing, and typically well-cast, but You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger isn't one of Woody Allen's more inspired late-period efforts.
Critic Consensus: It's sporadically amusing, and typically well-cast, but You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger isn't one of Woody Allen's more inspired late-period efforts.
All Critics (134) | Top Critics (38) | Fresh (61) | Rotten (73) | DVD (5)
Elaborately plotted, perfunctorily directed, unevenly acted and short on verbal wit.
It's interesting and worthwhile, with creative vitamins that are absent in so much of what fills the cinemas.
There's plenty of ambiguous intellectual heft lurking behind the curtain of mediocrity - so it's a pity it feels like it was dashed off in a few hours one afternoon.
The talented cast fails to gel into a dynamic ensemble: You just see actors going through familiar paces.
Woody Allen cranks out another formulaic interweave of romantic crushes, with old jazz on the soundtrack to supply some artificial gaiety.
Classic Woody -- an ensemble cast of brilliant actors, a timeless story that could be set virtually anywhere and crisp writing and direction that neither lollygags or rushes.
Allen has forgotten how to write like people talk, and the muted yellows of upper-class London are as boring as the script, which contains a Viagra joke, in 2010.
Rather uninspired and insubstantial, but entirely watchable.
I'm fighting the urge to just cut-and-paste from my older reviews of Allen's late-career output, as that seems to be how he writes his screenplays these days.
Woody at his weakest.
It's one of Allen's lesser films yet, as is so often the case with his B-material, it still features terrific performances...and a cluster of truth-nailing scenes that are better than what you typically find in major releases.
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger is the amnesiac relative of Allen's body of work. It's wearing the fleshy mask of all that you love; but conducts itself with an abrasive and frightened detachment.
Allen could have come up with something a lot more interesting to say than that illusion is always better than reality; and so this is only a very soulless tale of sound and fury that signifies nothing and never knows if it wants to be a comedy, a romance or a drama.
Super Reviewer
Middling Woody, a cast of talented actors portray a bunch of not terribly interesting or for that matter likable people.
I'm not sure why this film doesn't get better ratings, but my hunch is that it's because, compared to other Woody Allen everyone's-lusting-after-everyone-else ensemble films, this one's rather humourless. I thought that Brolin and Watts played a good exasperated couple, and that Lucy Punch was incredible as the mother-in-law that pushes every button Brolin's character has. Plus, as usual for Allen, there's a fascination with death on display, and the psychics and seances lighten the rest of the story's mood, which is a sombre one given that it's basically about writer's block and the dissolution of what should be a promising marriage. I really got into the characters, though - despite how despicable the writer Brolin played was - and I thought the story was captivating, if a little twee as it approached the end. A good film, or maybe, as a writer myself, one I'd have liked no matter what. In any case, I guarantee that it's not as bad as you've heard.
Woody Allen movies are very hit and miss with me. I haven't really seen much of his older stuff, but I've seen a lot of his new stuff. "Match Point" and "Vicky Christina Barcelona" are both fantastic movies. But neither "Anything Else" or "Whatever Works" did anything for me. So I watched this hoping it would be good as it has a great cast. Naomi Watts, Anthony Hopkins, Josh Brolin, among others sound like a true all star roster of talent. But, this movie is downright horrible. I lost interest after about 15 minutes, and didn't make it through to the end. The story is weak, it has a needless narrator, and the acting is horrible. My biggest complaint is that the actors appear to be reading their dialogue instead of acting it out. It's almost like it is a bad play. I'll probably continue to watch future Woody Allen movies, but if they continue to be this bad, I'll give up on him completely. Just skip this crap and rent "Match Point" instead.
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