Today brings the latest gritty slice of life drama from Woody NoSnitchin’ Allen, Midnight in Paris. I’m just fucking with you, it’s Woody’s latest slight comedy that doesn’t seem to take place in a world that uses money to pay for anything. All of the characters are well off (even the historical hallucinations Owen Wilson’s lead character imagines during, you guessed it, Midnight in Paris), and money is never an object. Oh, but you wanted a review…
What Works: The scenes set in 1920’s Paris–which Wilson’s character goes to every midnight–with historical figures like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Salvador Dali, and Ernest Hemingway. Corey Stoll is especially good as Hemingway. Also, this movie actually has a message as Allen details the dangers of nostalgia, surprising since that’s been his stock and trade since he got started.
What Doesn’t Work: The daytime scenes. The big drawback to a movie where the lead character gets to escape to 1920’s Paris at night is that it shows just how dreary and stale things are when he’s in the present. It’s effective to set up why he lives in the past, but it’s not a whole lot of fun being stuck with ridiculously pretentious professors (Michael Sheen), Tea Party supporters, and a gold digging fiancee (Rachel McAdams).
What I Would Have Done Differently: This movie is a very short 89 minutes but it actually feels too long. I think part of it is because too much of the movie takes place in the daytime instead of the magical Paris landscape and also because too much of it feels aimless. The first three minutes are just photos of Paris, so that shows you a kind of slack attitude that the whole movie has that really undercuts it’s “Hey, don’t live in the dream of how beautiful was back then…now look at these dreamy Paris postcards.”