It would be just as easy (and lazy) to ascribe the words “whimsical” or “charming” to Woody Allen’s 41st(!) film as “well-intentioned” and “creaky.” But the truth lies somewhere in the middle—the conceit of the film is an interesting one, and though the execution of it works more often than not, the misfires occur often enough to all but ensure a disconnect between the audience and what’s happening on the screen.Still, Owen Wilson as all-but-defeated screenwriter Gil Pender, on vacation in the city of the title with his improbably shrewish fiancée (Rachel McAdams, dutifully allowing herself to be trapped by the character’s confines) and cartoonishly dreadful in-laws, comes off as one of the better Woody Allen surrogates, either because he’s savvy enough to steer clear of Allen impersonation or he’s too “Owen Wilson” to effectively impersonate anyone. Either way, it’s a winning, slightly revelatory performance. And Allen frames and photographs Wilson’s face without cutting prematurely, allowing us to be persuaded by Gil's reactions to the fantastical events (each night at the stroke of midnight, Gil is transported back to the Paris of the 1920s populated by the likes of Hemingway, Dali, and Fitzgerald) unfolding before his eyes; rather than seeing things through Gil's eyes, we see them registered on his face.
If you’re a Paris-in-the-'20s fetishist (I’m guessing you’re probably not), there’s a lot to feast on here—the set design and photography have a much-needed and impressive transportative quality—even if some of the setup is hackneyed. Some scenes come off as near-miss variations on tighter-scripted Allen moments, where closing-scene punchlines meant to linger as the film segues into its next scene are instead only suggested by the cutting, relying on the audience's collective recall of similarly structured, more successfully mounted scenes from other Allen films rather than the precision of the punchline. And I think we can all agree that it’s more than a little tiresome to have the Woody Allen surrogate as the only character with any perspective; his fiancée is a drag, his object of affection (a thoroughly winning but elegiac Marion Cotillard) lives in a bygone era, and the impossibly glowing, agreeable and fetishized sales clerk he encounters at a flea market is way too young for him (which makes for, in the universe of Woody Allen, a perfect match).
Midnight in Paris is a clever, slight, handsome little diversion, and you might just enjoy it, as I did, as long as your tolerance for known celebrities playing historical figures is high, and you’re not looking to laugh out loud too much or be moved emotionally.
If you’re a Paris-in-the-'20s fetishist (I’m guessing you’re probably not), there’s a lot to feast on here—the set design and photography have a much-needed and impressive transportative quality—even if some of the setup is hackneyed. Some scenes come off as near-miss variations on tighter-scripted Allen moments, where closing-scene punchlines meant to linger as the film segues into its next scene are instead only suggested by the cutting, relying on the audience's collective recall of similarly structured, more successfully mounted scenes from other Allen films rather than the precision of the punchline. And I think we can all agree that it’s more than a little tiresome to have the Woody Allen surrogate as the only character with any perspective; his fiancée is a drag, his object of affection (a thoroughly winning but elegiac Marion Cotillard) lives in a bygone era, and the impossibly glowing, agreeable and fetishized sales clerk he encounters at a flea market is way too young for him (which makes for, in the universe of Woody Allen, a perfect match).
Midnight in Paris is a clever, slight, handsome little diversion, and you might just enjoy it, as I did, as long as your tolerance for known celebrities playing historical figures is high, and you’re not looking to laugh out loud too much or be moved emotionally.
