Naomi Watts stars as Sally in Woody Allen's "You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger" (Keith Hamshere/Sony Pictures Classics)

Roy (Josh Brolin) is a mediocre writer who cannot fulfill the promise of his first book and will not accept that being an author is not his calling. He believes he finds a muse in Dia (Freida Pinto), a beauty who lives across the way and has a penchant for Spanish guitars and red outfits. Roy’s wife, Sally (Naomi Watts), is an assistant at an art gallery and longs for the high class and high priced lifestyle of her boss (Antonio Banderes). Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) her father, has that lifestyle, to an extent, though he cares only of his mortality, working out at the gym and marrying a young “actress” as futile strategies to warn off the inevitable.

Floating above this all is Helena (Gemma Jones) Sally’s mother and Alfie’s ex-wife. She answers to the visions of a higher calling—namely those of her dowdy fortune teller who tells all details about her past life. Helena, you see, may have been Joan of Arc at one point. “I have always had a fondness for French things,” she gasps.

Allen, who has been cranking out around a film a year for the previous 40, is long past the point of surprising his audience. The established message that binds most of his work, and certainly anything that has come out during this expanding “late period,” is a kind of self-aware nihilism. We know the character’s fates long before they do, well, because they’re in a Woody Allen movie. Watch as they flirt with their desires, chuckle as their lives crumble or play out nicely, all to the mysterious order of the universe where fair is foul and foul is fair (the Shakespeare is courtesy of a superfluous narrator). It’s all an exercise leading up to that point. And before you ask, no, the film is not funny.

Still the actors are all game for the exercise, and do well for the most part in doling out the cumbersome-- though grammatically precise-- language. Hopkins and Jones in particular are strong in conveying the unfairness of getting old, and Watts has a nice moment in the car with Banderas, when her chance at getting what she wants slips quietly off into the night.

Brolin is completely out of place. His rough edges and heavy frame are glaringly awkward, and he doesn’t seem to care much about what is happening around him. As Roy’s frustration increases, most scenes end with him putting his hands on his waste and squinting off into the distance-- a pose and countenance that is less writer and more Dubya.

Also, look for a blink-or-you’ll-miss-it cameo by the city of London.

Unlike many of Allen’s movies, murder and likewise death do not figure as much into the proceedings, which is a bit of a letdown from the title’s implications. But when Allen himself one day meets the Tall Dark Stranger there’s a fair chance that not much from this film will be on his mind.

Reach reporter Tom Dotan here.