Midnight In Paris

“Woody Allen Makes Magic”

Woody Allen’s “Midnight In Paris” is charming and delightful. Getting out of New York has definitely been inspiring Allen in recent years and this is one of his most entertaining films in quite some time.

Critics everywhere have been challenging themselves to write about this film without giving away a magical plot twist. Roger Ebert didn’t even try to avoid it announcing at the top of his review that there would be spoilers ahead. As a rule, I never put spoilers in my reviews, but I also don’t get as detailed as most film critics when reviewing a film. If you want details, see the film!

Having said that, I firmly do not believe that divulging the so-called plot twist in “Midnight In Paris” would be a spoiler at all. That’s because it’s not really a plot twist to begin with. It first happens ten minutes into the film and then continues throughout the entire movie. It’s the premise of the film and therefore should not be kept a secret. It’s the seed from which the plot grows. So here I go, if you really don’t want to know then stop reading now.

Hollywood screenwriter and aspiring novelist Owen Wilson is vacationing in Paris with his fiance (Rachel McAdams) and her disapproving parents. Wilson decides to take a solo walk around Paris at night. But when the clock strikes midnight, he is magically transported to the 1920s. There he parties with his artistic and literary heroes such as Cole Porter, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Salvador Dali, Henri Matisse and others. If you’re not familiar with these historic figures, you should google them before seeing this movie.

Wilson falls for the adorable Adriana, a young muse of Picasso delightfully played by Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard. (That must be the reason why Edith Piaf isn’t a character in this film!)

Woody Allen has dreamed up a film that finally allows him to justify his obsession with using music from this period. He’s working with characters that he clearly admires and respects. He probably knows more about these people than his audience will. There’s a very funny exchange between Wilson and filmmaker Luis Bunuel about Bunuel’s film “The Exterminating Angel” that only die-hard cinephiles will get.

I suspect that if Woody Allen made this film in the 70s or 80s, it would be a more accomplished work. As it is here, it often feels so light and fluffy that if you blow on the screen it might float away. In recent years, Woody Allen has shown us that he still has some good ideas for films. Here he seems to have made a film of an idea instead of taking that idea and really making a film out of it.

DVD Double Feature:

Woody Allen’s films, whether comedy or drama, all tend to be remembered as being very talkey and character-driven. That’s a good thing for people who like intelligent films. But it’s hard to recall Allen ever straying from reality as he does with his “Midnight In Paris” time-travel gimmick. He got his most magical results once back in 1984 with the classic comedy “The Purple Rose Of Cairo”. Mia Farrow plays a Depression-era waitress who loves spending her time at the movies. She sees the same film so often that a character on the screen (Jeff Daniels) notices her in the audience and comes off the screen to meet and romance her. Totally charming.