Hard to believe this movie is from the writer of The Kugelmass Episode

Rating: 5/10 (28 June 2015)

We borrowed the DVD of Paris at Midnight from the library. My hubby thought it was such schmaltz he left the room about 15 minutes after the start of the film (he thought the first 3 minutes of shots of Paris were an art's students presentation that went on for way too long). I didn't think much of it either- I would have loved it when I was studying for my BA in English. It's a film for sophomores studying English or Art. The actors playing the famous writers, painters, and surrealists were nice to look at though. Hemingway was much too repetitive.Paris is a wonderful city but I never thought of it as the most romantic city in the world or the best place for writers and artists to live. Allen did nothing interesting with the premise. I loved the idea of Zelda Fitzgerald taking a Valium. But the present didn't corrupt the past. None of the characters came to visit the present either. Hard to believe this movie is from the same man who wrote "The Kugelmass Episode". It was great when Emma Bovery went shopping in the New York of the 1980s. What would Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda, Hemingway and Dali think of 2015? Well, Gertrude Stein would be thrilled to bits by the recent Supreme Court ruling. Do yourself a favor: after seeing the movie look up the paintings, films, and novels mentioned by the characters, both in the 1920s and 1890s sequences.