It's tough being a decades-long Woody Allen fan in 2010. The glory days of the early 1970s through mid-1980s are long over, yet this prodigous auteur still releases at least one new movie a year, so we keep showing up in hopes of something resembling the greatness of Annie Hall, The Purple Rose of Cairo, or Hannah and Her Sisters (a film I still watch every Thanksgiving night).

But sometime along the mid to late 1990's, these dutiful visits became somewhat tortuous. I can't even remember the titles of some of these truly awful films, except for one, Celebrity. And what was the one starring Christina Ricci and the kid from American Pie? Ugh!! But mainstream critics dutifully kept giving him great reviews, never once admitting at the time how bad these movies are, so I only ever found out when I went to see them for myself.

After a while, when a new Woody Allen movie opened, you'd start seeing reviews admitting that maybe his last few efforts weren't so good, but he's back to form at last, this time for sure! This went on for a few more years, giving me more rationalization for giving in to the call of duty.

In 2005, though, having temporarily moved his base from New York to London, he released the excellent suspense drama Match Point, a far cry from his usual self-loathing New York character-driven plots that not only did it seemed he was back at the top of his craft, but it almost actually seemed like it was directed by somebody else entirely. After all, it resembled nothing he had ever created before!

But the next year, still in London, came Scoop, and it was back to another half-hearted, intermittently amusing attempted comedy, another containing only slight reminders of his greater works of the past. It would also be the last time he would appear as an actor in one of his films.

A few more years came and went, with another new movie each of those years, but only Vicky Cristina Barcelona (shot in Spain) receiving any kind of great critical notice. By now, most of the powerful old critics of the past finally seem to realize this isn't the same Woody as the one from those old days. Last year's Whatever Works, set back in New York and starring the lovably curmongen Larry David, was another half-lame comedy easily forgotten.

So it helps to walk into a Woody Allen movie these days with extremely low expectations. There's no reason to stop going now, if you've been going every year for 40 years (I've actually only been going since 1985's The Purple Rose of Cairo, but I caught up fast). His movies get nowhere near mainstream cineplexes anymore, and even the local arthouse multiplex (which gave up a few years ago to go mostly mainstream, with one or two screens showing token independent films) has stopped showing his movies.

So his latest movie, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, got mediocre reviews and played only at our local discount multiplex (which kindly devotes one or sometimes two screens to films nobody else wants to show). Village 8, a skanky place with skanky screens, nonetheless provided my only practical opportunity to see Woody's latest and, with nothing else worth seeing this weekend, off I went...

I liked it! Within a couple of minutes, I had realized we were back in London, and I was very happy (still being quite the Anglophile though it has been five years since my last visit). I was thoroughly entertained throughout this romantic comedy. I didn't roll my eyes once, and, you know I'm just thinking about this, but... I believe this is Woody's first comedy (as opposed to the dramas he sometimes does) that does not feature a "Woody substitute", i.e. another actor filling the nervous nebbish role he played in most of his comedies until the mid-1990's when he started using younger actors in his place.

So in my book, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger is Woody Allen's best romantic comedy in decades (which isn't saying much)...