Both my parents (who see a movie about once a year or less) and my mother-in-law saw “Midnight in Paris” before I did. It’s one of those little pleasers, perhaps especially to a certain generation, that gains steam through word of mouth-around-town kind of thing. Some folks tell their friends who tell others and they tell others who implore their adult kids to go and on it goes from there.
Woody Allen’s latest film is a clever, charming homage to the city of Paris and the golden age of the 1920s. It’s about an engaged American couple who visit Paris but start to drift apart when Gil, played by Owen Wilson, a struggling writer, falls for the city and wants to move there after marriage. Inez, played by Rachel McAdams, doesn’t share his romantic notions of the City of Lights, and plans instead for their life in Malibu. While Inez is out dancing with friends and tagging along with her parents, Gil opts to walk the city streets, magically falling into a kind of time portal at midnight that takes him back to Paris in the 1920s and all of the famous writers and artists of the day.
The film’s pretty funny from the start, poking fun at hopeless Americans in Paris, but gets a little zanier when Gil starts to meet his idols from the ’20s, including Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, T.S. Eliot, Dali, Picasso and many others. To appreciate the full scoop, it helps if you recall these giants of the ’20s, or the artists who came and went at Gertrude Stein’s salon. By the way, where was Alice Toklas, Stein’s long-time partner in it? The Hemingway character is amusingly funny, spouting dialogue as if from one of his books about Truth and Courage, War and Love.
Along the way, Owen Wilson does a wonderful job carrying the film as the doe-eyed, dream-filled, amusable Gil. His performance reminded me a bit of Woody Allen himself when he played in “Hannah and Her Sisters” and “Annie Hall.” Owen was a hoot in “Wedding Crashers,” but he’s even better in this.
“Midnight in Paris” is perhaps Woody Allen at his least offensive. It’s a nostalgic, heartfelt romp with delightful shots of Paree, a bit safer perhaps than his film “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” and more clever than his recent “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger,” which is also about a struggling writer. It shows that Allen still has it even when he’s far from his beloved New York.
