Woody Allen has been steadily making movies for longer than I've been alive. His current rate seems to be to make on movie, usually about 90 minutes or so long, every year. Now, of course, producing a movie a year for a career as long as Allen's means many may not match up to the quality of his best films, most of which are behind him. But every so often, he comes out with another one worth seeing, including 2011's Midnight in Paris.
It is worth noting, of course, that Midnight in Paris, though fun, is rather light fare from Allen. It lacks the experimental story structure of Annie Hall or the deep character work of Vicki Christina Barcelona. There isn't even the wacky slapstick of his early comedies like Sleeper. There's comedy to Midnight in Paris, just for me mostly to make me smile as opposed to really laugh out loud. I don't get the idea that there's much to this that's all that deep. The movie, basically, has two things going for it.
The first is Owen Wilson. Allen has reached an age where even he can no longer play the neurotic romantic lead to increasingly younger actresses (if he ever could post Mia Farrow). Instead, he's cast a variety of Allen stand-ins, many of whom channel Allen's own film persona to one degree or another. Larry David's take, in the so-so Whatever Works, basically comes across as a half-assed, or maybe whole-assed, Allen impression. With Owen Wilson, there's a shift. Though Wilson has some lines and scenes where he confesses to be afraid of death and making very Allen-like statements, none of this seems to wash away the screen persona of Wilson himself. He seems more like an Owen Wilson character, something of a carefree slacker, then he does the overly analytical Woody Allen character he might have been in anyone else's hands. Wilson's Gil seems inclined to stay in Paris like he just drifted there and seems to like the place. Allen's own take probably would have been due to a romantic ideal that the past somehow seems superior to the future. Yes, that is written into the character, but it comes across as more of an excuse for Wilson to enjoy the bohemian joys of Paris.
The second strength is Paris itself. The film opens with a series of shots of Paris before breaking into the main action. Allen's used this technique before, mostly with his native New York City in movies like Manhattan. This establishes Paris as a character, and a fairly romantic character as it is. The viewer can much more easily believe that so many people have fallen in love with the City of Lights, in ways that are lacking in other movies where a trip to Paris seems to be the highlight of a person's life (I'm mostly thinking here of Anne Hathaway's trip there with Meryl Streep for The Devil Wears Prada). It is also easy to believe that just waiting at the right spot could allow a person to visit the time period of the city that they most want to see.
The movie opens with Wilson's Gil on a trip to Paris with his fiancee and her parents. They're there for business. Gil is talking about moving there. He's a frustrated writer trying to finish a novel instead of being a Hollywood hack, and Paris has a long history of attracting artists. His wife-to-be and in-laws-to-be, sadly, are merely materialistic rightwing stereotypes, something Allen doesn't paint as full-characters as well he does Gil himself. Included are fiancee Inez's know-it-all male friend (the kind of guy who thinks he knows more than a native French tour guide played by the former French First Lady Carla Bruni), and it becomes clear Gil is not going to be happy with this match even if he doesn't realize it yet.
Then, while out walking, he gets a ride to the 1920s, hears Cole Porter perform, meets Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and then Ernest Hemmingway, and starts to get some real writing advice from people he really respects but have been dead for decades. He goes back to the present but can't get Inez to go with him, and starts up a tentative relationship with a woman (played by Marion Cotillard) who's about to break it off with Pablo Picasso. She herself longs for another, long gone Paris in the 1890s, and it is this that leads Gil to learn a valuable lesson about the grass and when its always greener.
Midnight in Paris is a fun movie, where atmosphere adds more to the movie than anything particularly deep the characters learn. It's hardly Allen's best, but its above average for the man this late in his career. His best films may be behind him, but that doesn't mean he still can't produce an enjoyable flick worth 90 minutes of the viewers' time.
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