Review: Midnight in Paris

Owen Wilson is a fledgling screenwriter attempting to make it as a novelist. He’s in Paris with his bitchy fiancé Rachel McAdams and her Republican parents (including dad Kurt Fuller). McAdams has little interest in Wilson’s Francophilic love of Paris nor his ambitions to be taken more seriously as a writer. In fact, she seems far more interested in know-it-all academic Michael Sheen than her own fiancé. Wilson’s fantasy life would be to live in 1920s France to mingle with all the literary luminaries and artistic geniuses hung out. And whilst walking the streets alone one midnight, he appears to be magically transported back to Paris in the 20s, and indeed gets to hang out with the likes of the Fitzgeralds’ (Tom Hiddleston, Alison Pill), Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll), Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), as well as meeting Pablo Picasso (Marcial Di Fonzo Bo), Salvador Dali (Adrien Brody), Luis Bunuel (Adrien de Van), Cole Porter (Yves Heck), and others. He also meets the beautiful Adriana (Marion Cotillard), Picasso’s mistress, whom he becomes attracted to. He loves this world so much, he doesn’t want to leave it, even though he isn’t quite sure how he got there in the first place (Nor is the audience, but you’re not meant to think about that, I guess). Lea Seydoux plays a nice street vendor Wilson meets, whilst France’s then first lady Carla Bruni plays a tour guide.

2011 seemed to be the year for cinema to embrace itself, but unlike Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo” or Michel Hazanavicius’ “The Artist” (both of which were entertaining, the former especially), writer-director Woody Allen (“Annie Hall”, “Match Point”, “Hannah and Her Sisters”) has decided to not just embrace French cinema (to an extent, so did “Hugo” and “The Artist”), but Francophiles and France itself. Unfortunately, the result is a film only to be enjoyed by people with their heads up their own arses. I bet it’s Melissa George’s favourite movie, though (Hey, I’m already likely pissing hundreds of people off, what’s one more angry complaint?). The formula is something like: Wine + France + Pseudo-intellectuals + vapid WASPs + Woody Allen= My flesh crawling. I’m sorry, but this is a Francophile wank job, all pretentiousness and no substance or thought whatsoever. If you’re not on Woody’s wavelength (and I’ve only been on his wavelength a couple of times, such as “Annie Hall” and “Deconstructing Harry”, so bear that in mind), it becomes an almighty chore, but if you’re one of the champagne sniffers and baguette eaters, you’ll probably love it. Hell, it looks like Woody made it specifically for high-brow critics and no one else (It seems like it was made for the Michael Sheen character, actually. So why is he seen as a kind of villain, then?). It offers nothing for anyone else, and I hated every minute of it.

 

The story is actually amazingly stupid. It’s basically a snooty version of John Candy’s underrated “Delirious”, minus the amnesia and the laughs (Yeah, “Delirious” is better than a Woody Allen movie. I said it). It’s pretty infantile, and when you think about it, extremely egotistical. Wilson is essentially a Woody stand-in, and he’s palling around with all kinds of artistic and cultural luminaries. Nice one, Woody. You’re so humble. How in the hell did this win the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay? I guess there’s lots of snooty Francophiles in the Academy.

A likeable Owen Wilson tries hard and is well-cast (though that also means he’s doing Woody schtick that tends to grate at times), but most of the other actors are at Woody’s mercy here. Alison Pill, for instance, merely gives a ‘performance’, an affected, Katharine Hepburn-esque, irritating performance. Rachel McAdams, meanwhile, suffers from Woody’s oft-criticised poor treatment of female characters. Her character is a shrill, insensitive cow, and the lovely McAdams has no choice but to play that one note. Not even Oscar-winner Kathy Bates can escape the arch and caricatured way these characters are written and gives us one of her lesser turns. The best of the lot is the beautiful Marion Cotillard, who looks lovely and is a lot easier to put up with than McAdams. However, it is a tad strange to hear French beauty Cotillard bung on the French accent more than usual. I don’t know whether it’s simply because she’s been playing more Americanised characters of late or if Cotillard naturally speaks with a much more subtle French accent than the one here, but it did annoy me a bit. Adrien Brody’s cameo is even worse. He’s amusing himself by speaking with a funny accent. That pretty much sums up the whole film, really. The idea of Wilson speaking to surrealists is a good one in theory. But Woody’s not really interested in exploring that. He’s not interested any of these people and thus the actors can do very little. He doesn’t really care about Ernest Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, Picasso, Bunuel, etc., he’s just dropping their names ‘coz he thinks he’s clever.

The most bizarre thing of all is that even though you’d expect Woody to present Paris in its most beautiful light, he and his filter-happy cinematographer Darius Khondji (“Se7en”, “The Ruins”) seem far more interested in lighting set-ups than they do the city’s architecture. I honestly didn’t think Woody would ever stoop to that irritating modern stylistic choice. Personally, I think the film should’ve been shot in B&W anyway.

I got some of the references (Woody practically beats you over the head with the T.S. Eliot one) but didn’t for one moment care because it’s a dopey short film idea stretched out to feature length. It’s one joke repeated over and over, and it wasn’t remotely funny the first time. At least “Hugo” had a genuine storyline, and wasn’t just a bunch of references being tossed-off. It also referenced real-life characters, but with much more depth afforded to them than this film. This is 90 minutes of pretentious name-dropping and it made me want to beat my own brains in before the halfway point had even been reached.

 

It has no story and seemingly no point, either (Yes there’s a moral, but that doesn’t mean there’s a point to the film having been made). I’m surprised Woody didn’t end it with ‘it was all just a dream’. That’s how lame it is. And talk about a tacked-on romance at the denouement (I can use French words too, Woody!) and seriously underwhelming ending! Wow!

 

If Woody Allen were to write an episode of the excellent “Frasier”, this would be it. And it would suck. I guess I just wasn’t meant to be a Woody Allen fan, I seem to be the only one on the planet who hated this. You’re all wrong, I tells ‘ya! 

 

Rating: D+