☻ Midnight in Paris (2011). I was expecting better of this Woody Allen film, but the film lacks the psychologically-challenged character Allen once performed himself, so perhaps that explains it.
Gil (Owen Wilson), a struggling writer, is too laid back, too normal. He's in love with the Paris and would like to live there. He's visiting the city with high maintenance and overly demanding fiancee, Inez (Rachel McAdams), along with her parents, John (Kurt Fuller) and Helen (Mimi Kennedy). I found Inez too ordinary. She's is too practical -- she radiates money. What she wants is a nice investment banker, so what's she doing with a guy like Gil?
Their obnoxious know-it-all acquaintance, Paul (Michael Sheen), a stock Allen character, serves to underline the differences between Gil and Inez. However, Gil is so laid back he simply allows Paul to natter on like the fool he is.
More than anything else, Gil just seems to drift into the magic of a Paris midnight, meeting up with a budding writers dream team including F Scott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston) and a suicidal Zelda Fitzgerald (Alison Pill), Ernest Hemmingway (Corey Stoll), Gertrude Stein (Cathy Bates) in the guise of a willing book reviewer, Salvador Dali (Adrien Brody), and even Cole Porter (Yves Heck).
As expected, I disliked Inez and Paul and found John and Helen suitably dull. I enjoyed sharing Gil's love of the city and his midnight forays into it's fabled ex-pat past. Yet I was unable to buy into Gil's growing alienation with Inez and the seductive pull of the past. I couldn't engage with Gil's character, nor could I fathom how or why Paris turned magical. Were Gil's midnight travels flights of romantic fancy or something more sinister? I didn't really care.
Speaking out:
92%/84% rottentomatoes.com (25 Jun 2011*)
* Date of web access.
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