In a couple of posts below, I wrote about how the improbable has happened: Clint Eastwood's directing star has risen, while Woody Allen's has ... what? Been left frozen in the love-and-death landscape of 18th-century Russia? Riddled by gunfire over Broadway? Forgotten in the purses of Hannah and her sisters? Lost in the fine print of Broadway Danny Rose's canceled contract?

You get the point.

If you're judging the state of Allen's career based on his latest movie, "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger," all the above are true. I can't remember the last time I watched a movie that boasted more unlikeable characters.

The film revolves around two main couples. The first is a struggling American writer (Josh Brolin) and his seemingly British wife (played by Australian actress Naoi Watts). The second is the wife's parents, her metaphysical-minded mother (Gemma Jones) and her raging-against-the-dying-of-the-light father (Anthony Hopkins).

Around these two couples hover a number of others. For the younger pair, there's the wife's art-gallery-owner boss (Antonio Banderas) and the husband's love interest (Freida Pinto, from "Slumdog Millionaire"). For the older, there's the husband's love interest, Charmaine (Lucy Punch), and the wife's new-found friend (Roger Ashton-Griffiths). And so on.

"You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger" is, in the end, a mediation on love, loyalty and the very nature of relationships. Oh, there are the ubiquitous Allen obsessions with life's greater meaning, etc., but overall these characters are more concerned with the here and now than with what will be. All don't like where they are, but none is capable of looking authentically inside and altering what needs to be changed.

So they flounder. And cheat. And lie. And look desperately for some answer that doesn't involve their actually settling for something other than the promise of ... everything?

Whatever. This is a tired subject. And it's dark, dark humor. At any moment it feels as if one, or maybe all, of the characters will resort to the violence of "Match Point" or "Cassandra's Dream." But, no, they aren't even that brave. Ultimately, all of the characters -- save for the two most pathetic -- stumble and fumble and, it's pretty clear, will end up losing everything.

The movie demonstrates Allen's typical competence. I have to say, though, that his use of London is growing nearly as tiresome as his former dependence on New York used to be.

The question I always ask is, what does a film mean? Or, put another way, what is it trying to say? Whatever "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger" is trying to say, it's not something that I'm very interested in hearing.

Below: The trailer for "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger."