Country: United States
Genre: Comedy/ Satire/ Romance/ Fantasy
Director: Woody Allen
Year: 2011
Rating: 
TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE
Midnight In Paris is a slight but amusing effort from Woody Allen. It gets extra points for avoiding Woody’s usual pitfall of making all of the characters sound like versions of himself. For a change, he has written characters who are very specific, believable, and related to real characters in the real world.
I especially enjoyed his depiction of Southern California Republicans. I’ve often scratched my head, wondering what kind of assholes would still vote for George W. Bush after the hell he put us through during his two illegitimate administrations (a solid and unwavering 23% of the voting population would still vote for him today). Now I know.
I didn’t realize that Rachel McAdams was playing Inez, the bitch self-described “hack screenwriter” Gil (Owen Wilson) is set to marry, until after I looked at the end credits. I’m so used to seeing her play nice people that I couldn’t recognize her. Thank you, Woody, for showing us how good an actress McAdams is. I’m sure she will get a much wider choice of roles now.
Owen Wilson excels as a Southern Cal surrogate for Woody Allen, although the way he flirts with Adriana (Marion Cotillard) is so lame that you want to slap him. Allen’s satire of Hemingway (Corey Stoll) and Dali (Adrien Brody) is rather jejune, too, but never mind.
It’s so much fun to be thrust in 1920s and 1880s Paris (thanks largely to the efforts of art director Anne Seibel) along with Gil, that I was able to forgive Allen’s facile rendering of 1920s Paris.
But what really puts Midnight In Paris over the top is Allen’s satire of Southern California Republicans, which is as sharp as his rendering of 1920s Paris is blurry.
Midnight in Paris may not be a great movie, but it goes down easy, and scores some big laughs in the modern sections. That’s enough for me.
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