Review: You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger

Who’s in it? Freida Pinto, Naomi Watts, Anthony Hopkins, Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin

The plot Woody Allen’s latest movie sees the 60-something Helena compelled to visit a fortune teller, Cristal (Pauline Collins), following her divorce from her husband Alfie (Hopkins), who, in the throes of a late-life crisis, leaves his wife to pursue some mythical idea of capturing his lost youth with a free-spirited call girl called Charmaine (Lucy Punch).

Casting around for something to cling to as her personal life disintegrates, Helena throws caution to the wind and starts following Cristal’s advice to the letter – much to the chagrin of her grown-up daughter, Sally (Watts) and her husband, Roy (Brolin).

But pretty soon, money probs in their marriage see Sally finding her own eye wandering in the direction of Greg (Banderas), her boss at the art gallery where she works, and Roy stealing glances through the window at Dia (Pinto), the stunning musicologist who lives in the flat opposite and who always dresses in eye-catching red.

When Roy’s second novel is rejected by his publisher, he learns that a talented author friend of his, Henry, has died in an accident, leaving behind a manuscript he’d sworn was a potential best-seller, and which only Roy knows about.

Passing the book off as his own – and seeing it become an instant hit – Sally and Roy soon split and Roy persuades Dia to end her engagement and move in with him.

Meanwhile Helena meets her soul mate, just as Charmaine cuckolds Alfie by falling pregnant by another man, and Roy realises that he has been fed the wrong information – his author friend isn’t dead, but is in a coma and recovering fast…

Rating 4 out of 5