2011 Film: #18

#18 Midnight in Paris 


Face it, Allenophiles--Woody will never again approach the hot streak he put together throughout the 1970s. The thing about being arguably the game's longest-running auteur is that sometimes the material feels re-treaded upon. You can basically guarantee that after the Woody Allen playbill font and jazzy score plays us through the credits, our story will inevitably feature either "neurotic Jewish man monologue/aside" (Larry David in Whatever Works, Allen in Annie Hall), "deep-voiced omniscient narration" (Vicky Cristina Barcelona) or "Woody Allen character displaying his wittiness to others" (Midnight in Paris, just about everything else). The other thing is that no matter how many Woody Allens (i.e. Woody Allen speaking through lead actors) there are (Jason Biggs, Larry David, Owen Wilson), none of them are Woody Allen. They can imitate, but they can't quite nail it. His past decade has been streaky as hell, from the pretty good (Vicky Cristina, Match Point) to the not very good at all (Whatever Works, Melinda and Melinda), so it almost feels like the buzz surrounding Midnight  is sort of an Oscar sweetheart getting a nod because it's his first consistently well-received--and most lighthearted/appealing to the voters--movie in a long time.

Despite being the WASPiest Allen surrogate to date, Owen Wilson is the reason that this movie has charm. He's Gil, a hollywood writer turned novelist who, unlike his tremendous bitch fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams), finds inspiration in the streets, rather than the upscale fashion, of Paris. Gil and Inez are tagging along on a business trip with her parents, and Gil of course wastes little time in eschewing their conservative politics--it is a Woody Allen screenplay, after all. After running into him and girlfriend at the restaurant, Inez becomes more interested in the pompous intellectual offerings of her old professor friend Paul (Michael Sheen, rocking an American accent decently well). After listening to Paul destroy a museum guide at the Rodin Gardens (French first lady Carla Bruni, meh as an actress) and wax pedantic on different kinds of wine tannins, Gil has had enough. He declines an invite to go dancing and goes for a night stroll instead. On an empty street corner, the church bells strike twelve and a Model-T looking car rolls up. Without a second thought, Gil hops in and Midnight in Paris officially begins. When his feet next touch down on the cobblestone, he is in the golden era, shaking hands with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Picasso and his mistress Adriana (Marion Cotillard). Much to his dismay, he finds himself back in 2010 a few hours later. Gil goes onto create every excuse imaginable to avoid the present and get back to having a blast in the past-if he can find it again, that is.

Midnight is a fun movie, a lot of which is due to Owen Wilson choosing to play Gil like a wide-eyed kid in an old time candy store. Every time he turns a corner and realizes who he is meeting, his face lights up with joy: "You're Ernest Hemingway!" "Salvador Dali? The Salvador Dali?" "500 francs for a Matisse? Can I pick up 6 or 7?" The actors playing the dead socialite artists are very hit or miss, but the ones who are hit (Corey Stoll as gun enthusiast drunk Hemingway, Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein) add feel to the film. Ditto for Sheen and the asshole parents (dad is Kurt Fuller, who played Russell in Wayne's World; party time, excellent) in terms of making the present feel like a nightmare for Gil. One of the problems of the film, though, is that I didn't buy into the Rachel McAdams character in the least, and I had an issue buying into the potential of chemistry between Gil and Cotillard's Adriana. Both of them felt like caricatures to me. At times it felt far too fluffy to be an Allen film. But I liked it, all in all. The script reminds us that there is still a near-80 year old filmmaker who still flaunts liberal ideals and neuroses and forbidden romances. I agree with the sentiment that Midnight could be his finest work in a very long time; unfortunately, that's not saying a whole hell of a lot.

More this evening!