MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (Woody Allen). 100 minutes. Opens Friday (June 3). See listing Rating: NN
You’ll walk out of Woody Allen’s latest craving a visit to the City of Light, but Midnight In Paris is pretty slim.
Gil (Owen Wilson) and Inez (Rachel McAdams) are in the French capital as guests of her parents. He wants to stroll the romantic city she wants to shop. He’s trying to finish his novel she’s wishing he’d just stick to writing schlocky film scripts. They’re in trouble.
So’s the film, since you know exactly how it’s going to end before the first reel’s over.
Allen does give it a sweet narrative hook. While Inez rediscovers her old friend Paul (a gloriously slimy Michael Sheen), Gil starts roaming the streets at night, and over several days, when the clock strikes 12, a vintage cab picks him up and takes him back in time to the 1920s. There, he learns some life lessons from Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Pablo Picasso (Marcial Di Fonzo Bo), Picasso’s mistress (Marion Cotillard) and just about every other major figure of the era.
At first, these encounters are pure pleasure, and Wilson’s hilarious as he tries to grasp his situation, but the message of the movie – life is best lived in the present tense – is too banal to make us care.
Still, in the summer of sequels, Midnight In Paris’s ruminations on the nature of art offer a nice counterbalance.
