You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (C-)

Woody Allen may still be funny, but he's sure not much fun anymore. His new film, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, winds through the intersecting stories of a constellation of people. All are experiencing existential malaise; in love or out of love, everybody is unhappy.

The septuagenarian filmmaker, after a return to New York for his last film, Whatever Works, returns to London for this tale of domestic anti-bliss. Nobody can assemble a great cast like Woody Allen - he's like Aquaman summoning the creatures of the deep - and once again, he's got a short list of hot actors to play his parts.

Naomi Watts is this year's muse as Sally, a bright and beautiful woman on her way (she hopes) to becoming an arts dealer. She is married to a frustrated writer, Roy (Josh Brolin), whose work has stalled after a flash-in-the-pan first novel. There's also Sally's mother, Helena (Gemma Jones), who may have the most expressive face to ever fill a screen. Helena was recently dumped by Sally's father, Alfie (Anthony Hopkins), who is in the full throes of an oh-to-be-young-again crisis. Helena has taken to drinking too much and visiting a fortune teller, who fills her head with dreamy predictions of the great things coming her way.

Everyone in this movie is miserable; some are just more open about it. In Alfie, Allen has found a figure in which to play out every pathetic, self-deluding characteristic of men aging badly. As with so many Allen characters, Alfie is unaccountably wealthy. Waking one day to realize he is old, he starts working out maniacally, divorces his has-been wife, and quickly becomes engaged-married to a daffy but delicious call girl-actress, Dia (Freida Pinto). It's fun to watch the fiercely intelligent Hopkins play a guy so lost in fantasy and denial that he's turned himself into a clueless sap. But, through the movie, that's where he is and that's where he stays.

The same can be said for everyone in the movie - nobody ever figures anything out. Only Helena evolves, or devolves, as she drifts deeper into her delirium about past and future lives and the magical mystery of life everlasting. Hers is the only story that Allen's screenplay follows through on, and by the end, she's achieved some sort of happiness. Allen's message is clear: It's a happiness based on self-deception, summed up by Allen's unseen narrator repeating Sally's observation that "sometimes the illusion works better than the medicine." If that sounds like a minor tweaking of his Annie Hall summation of "I would, but I need the eggs," that's because it is. Almost 35 years later and he's saying the same thing, only the warmth and humor now seems more cold and mean.

Josh Brolin does a good job of showing us, in Roy, a man who uses his considerable charms (and a startlingly bad haircut) to mask his fear and selfishness. Watts is radiant as Sally. But this is Gemma Jones' party; it's no wonder that Allen can't keep his camera off of her. She goes from fragile bafflement to razor-sharp tantrum with the slightest flutter of an eyelid.

All the acting exploits in the world can't cover the gaping hole at the center of Allen's screenplay. Clever wordplay and some compelling staging and camera work don't make up for a script that doesn't so much end as just stop. What's more, the dark and dismal view of You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger fails to convince: This film isn't about the human condition; it's about the Woody Allen condition.

Directed by: Woody Allen

Starring: Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin, Gemma Jones, Anthony Hopkins, Antonio Banderas and Freida Pinto

Run time: 98 minutes

MPAA rating: R (some language, adult situations)

Synopsis: Woody Allen's latest sprawling comedy stars Antonio Banderas, Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin and Anthony Hopkins.

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