FOR ALL THE SAP AND SCHLOCK the man has forced upon his increasingly estranged public over the last 150 years or so, Woody Allen remains a surprisingly unsentimental filmmaker. A singular septuagenarian industry, Allen’s machine-like approach to filmmaking has long been one of his greatest virtues, but it’s also his biggest liability—his relentlessly annual offering of okay-to-shruggable seriocomedy has all but buried the glittering memory of past triumphs for his casual fans, and reduced his audience to none but the utterly devout. And yet he persists, without a precious bone in his body, subtly tweaking a brand that reached its peak some 30 years ago. Even for a lifelong Allen apologist, such as myself, the task of reviewing “the new Woody Allen movie” always seems like an exercise in futility, tantamount to offering critical commentary on the relative merits of a Doritos rebranding campaign: Sure, the veneer’s a little different each time, but ultimately the product’s steadfast homogeny is actually sort of the point.
Bad metaphors aside, you’ve probably noticed—perhaps to no small irritation—that I have said next to nothing about the new “new Woody Allen movie” in question, forgettably titled You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. But ask yourself: What exactly is there to say? Discontented but otherwise comfortable white people (Naomi Watts, Anthony Hopkins, Josh Brolin, and white-beloved non-white Antonio Banderas) make hasty, entitled decisions about marital fidelity, and then holdonwhuuut?!?! Whimsical synchronicity?!?! I mean, we’ve all heard this one, haven’t we? Honestly, the only thing that sets Tall Dark Stranger significantly apart from Allen’s last 15-20 films is the incredibly distracting choice of a narrator (Zak Orth), a misstep that gives the whole affair the feeling of a two-hour green band trailer. Otherwise, this is a perfectly serviceable addition to the brand: no less, and certainly no more.
Dear Zac Pennington,
We know who Woody Allen is. We know what he does. Next time you have 300 words for a review, please spend more than half of them discussing the film and jam the rest of your shoddy opinions about the director into a tight appositive phrase in the lede.
Thank you,
Your Readers
P.S. Learn to write.
Curious to know when Europeans were eliminated from the “White” category! Or is Spain no longer considered to be part of Europe? Antonio Banderas is SPANISH, as in “from SPAIN”! Not that there is anything wrong with being Mexican, Central American or South American, but you might as well be accurate if you are going to make a distinction!
@ Zac,
On the one hand I don’t think Ovidius understood the first three-quarters of your review.
On the other, I think Dee Dee read them far too closely and decided you were a shitweasel based on the single least crucial point in the whole thing.
(Journalism is a great job, except for the readers, hm?)
I, in what is apparently the third hand of this freakish metaphor mutant I’ve created, am going to go in a completely different direction and ask you the single most crucial query that you failed to address: Does this movie include Woody gettin’ wit’ a stunningly gorgeous starlet who would literally vomit on his naked body if presented with such sans the baffling clout he’s accumulated over the years as … whatever the fuck those cocksquirrels in New York City desperately hope he still is, if only to prop up the flagging ivory tower status that their comfortably habitable “Disney Land Of The Northeast” started shrugging off the moment Rudy Giuliani dropkicked the whores and junkies from what used to be moderately interesting slabs of concrete?