Midnight in Paris

I saw Midnight in Paris last night.

The movie is almost two movies in one.  There's the modern-day story set in modern-day time and then there is the fantasy story set in the past.  I hated the former and loved the latter.  I get the modern part of the movie as the plot driver for the fantasy past part of the movie, but oy, it was so jarring and shrill that I cringed every time the movie went back to it.  I would have been happier with five minutes of the present and another hour of the past.  I was so enchanted with the fantasy past that I melted into it the way one might melt into Diagon Alley.  At least with the Potter movies you get two hours of the good stuff without interruption.

I think Owen Wilson makes a pretty good new millenium Woody Allen.

I thought the lovenote-postcard style shots of Paris were wonderful.  I drunk them up.

I enjoyed Allison Pill as Zelda Fitzgerald and Corey Stoll as Ernest Hemingway and Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein.

Adrian Brody was priceless as Salvador Dali.

Complete cast list from Wikipedia below.

The cast includes (in credits order):

• Owen Wilson as Gil Pender
• Rachel McAdams as Inez
• Kurt Fuller as John, Inez's father
• Mimi Kennedy as Helen, Inez's mother
• Michael Sheen as Paul Bates
• Nina Arianda as Carol Bates
• Carla Bruni as Museum Guide
• Yves Heck as Cole Porter
• Alison Pill as Zelda Fitzgerald
• Corey Stoll as Ernest Hemingway
• Tom Hiddleston as F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Sonia Rolland as Josephine Baker
• Daniel Lundh as Juan Belmonte
• Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein
• Marcial Di Fonzo Bo as Pablo Picasso
• Marion Cotillard as Adriana
• Léa Seydoux as Gabrielle
• Emmanuelle Uzan as Djuna Barnes
• Adrien Brody as Salvador Dalí
• Tom Cordier as Man Ray
• Adrien de Van as Luis Buñuel
• Gad Elmaleh as Detective Tisserant
• David Lowe as T.S. Eliot
• Yves-Antoine Spoto as Henri Matisse
• Laurent Claret as Leo Stein
• Vincent Menjou Cortes as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
• Olivier Rabourdin as Paul Gauguin
• François Rostain as Edgar Degas

Midnight in Paris received a 92% fresh rating from critics and an 84% fresh rating from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes.


Roger Ebert says:

"This film is sort of a daydream for American lit majors."

"Allen makes no attempt to explain this magic. None is needed. Nor do we have to decide if what happens is real or imaginary. It doesn't matter. Gil is swept along in their wake and finds himself plunged into the Jazz Age and all its legends" 

"Some audience members might be especially charmed by "Midnight in Paris." They would be those familiar with Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, and the artists who frequented Stein's famous salon: Picasso, Dali, Cole Porter, Man Ray, Luis Bunuel and, yes, "Tom Eliot." Allen assumes some familiarity with their generation, and some moviegoers will be mystified, because cultural literacy is not often required at the movies anymore. Others will be as charmed as I was. Zelda is playfully daffy, Scott is in love with her and doomed by his love, and Hemingway speaks always in formal sentences of great masculine portent. " 

"This is Woody Allen's 41st film. He writes his films himself, and directs them with wit and grace. I consider him a treasure of the cinema. Some people take him for granted, although "Midnight in Paris" reportedly charmed even the jaded veterans of the Cannes press screenings. There is nothing to dislike about it. Either you connect with it or not. I'm wearying of movies that are for "everybody" — which means, nobody in particular. "Midnight in Paris" is for me, in particular, and that's just fine with moi." 

Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune said:

"With 'Midnight in Paris' it helps to have an Allen surrogate, the disenchanted Hollywoodscreenwriter played by Owen Wilson, who does more than remind the audience that it's difficult for a male lead in one of his films to sound like anyone other than Woody Allen. With his Texas drawl and his rather-be-surfing aura of genial distraction, Wilson makes everything go down easily here. Who would have guessed this actor would turn out to be an ideal conduit for Allen's nostalgic and romantic concerns?"

"The occasionally wearying quality of the contemporary scenes in 'Midnight in Paris' serves mainly to get the audience on Gil's side, though they really are more formulaic than necessary. The leap, or rather, glide into the realm of the fantastic is at once familiar and potent."

Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said:

"In the meantime, in between all the longing and wistfulness, this movie is sidesplitting because Allen gets to tap into an inexhaustible source of comedy: Whenever he wants a laugh, or 10 laughs, he just introduces another writer or painter and plays to our expectations. Every scene, for example, involving Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll) is a scream, because Allen has him talk the way Hemingway wrote. There is even a Man Ray joke here. And if you know Luis Buñuel's "The Exterminating Angel," you'll fall out of your chair when Gil starts feeding him movie ideas.

Adrien Brody shows up as the young Salvador Dalí - good casting. Alison Pill looks very much like Zelda, though Tom Hiddleston is too tall for Scott Fitzgerald, who was just a little bigger than Woody Allen. But Kathy Bates is just right as Gertrude Stein, as businesslike and motherly as you'd want her to be."

I wanted to go to Paris and drink cocktails and make love and talk about art and literature.  The high lasted for hours.

Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_in_Paris
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/midnight_in_paris/
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/26/DDSE1JKBJH.DTL
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110524/REVIEWS/110529987/-1/RSS
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/movies/sc-mov-0524-midnight-in-paris-20110526,0,7945838.column