Midnight in Paris

Travelling from London (the setting of his last movie and several others of the past decade), the increasingly Eurocentric Woody Allen now lands in playful, potent Paris, where he finds not only succulent romance, but also yearning nostalgia. He's got a new leading man (Owen Wilson, more enjoyable than usual), an excuse to soak in the joys of a rich creative history, and a fresh gimmick that involves a specific brand of time travel. It's all decent stuff at first and continues to lightly entertain throughout, but Allen's exploration of the magic that occurs at Midnight in Paris fails to rise above the gimmick, which itself dims simply under the city lights.

The story begins with hopeless nostalgist Gil (Wilson) vacationing in Paris with his fiancee Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her parents John (Kurt Fuller) and Helen (Mimi Kennedy). It's clear that Gil doesn't gel with Inez's parents and barely even with her, as each conversation seems forced and uncomfortable. Things are made only worse when Inez's friend Paul (Michael Sheen) and his girlfriend Carol (Nina Arianda) show up in Paris and wish to travel the land with the engaged couple. This is great news for Inez, who has clearly long since fallen under the spell of self-absorbed know-it-all Paul, but only bad news for Gil, who can't stand the guy's supposed pseudo-intellectualism.

At this point, Allen extracts some decent laughs from the situations that are always made more awkward by Paul and his insistence that he know something (preferably everything) about absolutely all subjects. Whether it's a trip to Versailles or a discussion of Rodan's personal life or even a wine tasting, Paul is a veritable encyclopedia of knowledge (or at least he plays one in Paris) always prepared with some juicy tidbit of information. Paul is also a total joke, which is how Allen likes it. It's easy to side with Gil at this point, because Paul is so blatantly designed to get on our nerves and irritate us with his canned commentary.

So one night, after having had enough of Paul and his babbling ways, Gil decides to take a stroll through the streets of Paris. It isn't long before (a) he's lost and (b) a clock chimes midnight, which soon leads to Gil stumbling upon a portal (a low-tech one, of course) that transports him back to 1920s Paris. This just so happens to be the exact period that Gil yearns for, so whether it's all real or Gil is simply passed out on the street and dreaming is up for discussion. But that's not the point, since this time travel plot is all about giving Allen (and Gil, too) a chance to meet some of the most creative minds of this beloved period.

Suddenly, Gil is meeting Zelda (Alison Pill) and Scott (Tom Hiddleston) Fitzgerald, as well as Hemingway (Corey Stoll), Picasso (Marcial Di Fonzo Bo), and Dali (Adrien Brody). There are many other artistic icons that Gil meets and admires, all of which represent an opportunity for Allen to play and have fun with a period he so dearly adores. The time travel trips become something of an obsession for Gil (and so much so for Allen that he made an entire movie out of them). Energized by his impossible encounters, Gil suddenly finds the inspiration and drive he's been searching for to really dig into the novel he's been writing.

Midnight in Paris is filled with the usual Woody Allen wit and while little insight is provided on these iconic characters, it's still a lot of fun to watch a drunken Hemingway look for a fight or a whimsical Dali speak surreally of rhinos. The actors are all game for an entertaining impersonation and Gil's joy over discovering each new artist is infectious. It is here, in the idealized version of 1920s Paris, that Allen's movie shines brightest. It's a period that is close to Allen's heart and the scenes that result from the time travel concept are colourful and sweet. The giddiness of the gimmick does eventually wear off, but by that time, Allen has infused this new (to Gil, at least) reality with a sharpened romantic edge.

As Gil becomes further seduced by the past and ever more distant from the present, he falls hard for a Parisian beauty named Adriana (a luminescent Marion Cotillard). This budding relationship strengthens his desire to make this world a permanent home, but things are complicated by the fact that he still has a fiancee back in contemporary Paris. Except it's not really complicated, because Allen takes the easy way out and cruelly transforms Inez and her parents into such loathsome caricatures that Gil's decision is practically made for him. It's a lame ploy that simplifies the conflict and weakens the movie's already fluffy dramatic impact.

In order for Gil to experience an awakening, why does Inez have to so obviously become his complete opposite, a shrill harpy interested only in glamorous falsehoods? And why do her parents have to so lazily fulfill the cliché of insufferable in-laws who just repeat the same things over and over again to illustrate their complete and utter lack of basic decency? Allen is so eager to make Gil's modern world a drab one that his message of the importance of living in today is lost in a haze of jazz era smoke. What we're left with are just memories (like Gil looking back on his time travel experiences) of the bubbly, energetic moments that really make Midnight in Paris occasionally twinkle. These moments are not as frequent as I would like, but the movie benefits considerably from their presence. Not every moment at Midnight is divine (okay, many are not), but there remains a certain satisfying flavour that soothes sweetly when the clock strikes twelve.