Fantastic idea lazily brought to screen

Rating: 7/10 (27 January 2012)

Let me clear this out right off the bat: I am a big-time Woody Allen fan. His 60s and 70s comedies are classics for the ages and his slightly more serious reflections on love and relationship (Annie Hall, Manhattan, etc) are seminal works. With Midnight in Paris, Allen comes back in shape and it's about time as he did hit a couple of road bumps in the last decade or so (or didn't hit it off, so to speak, with reviewers and audience alike). MIP starts à la Manhattan with long, steady shots of Paris by day and night accompanied by appropriate music. The idea is brilliant: a nostalgic and disgruntled writer, Gil (Owen) accidentally travels in time to the exact time period he is longing for, 1920s Paris. There he meets all his literary gods and goddesses and thinks himself in paradise, especially when compared to his present (2010) life of engagement to an incompatible woman (McAdams), frustrated ambitions, etc. He meets his destiny with Adriana (Cotillard) who herself longs for La Belle Époque, 1900s Paris. The epiphany comes when Gil alone realizes that the grass is always greener from afar, etc, and other fortune cookies pseudo-truism. Breaking the engagement and moving to Paris, he meets his truer destiny with Gabrielle (Seydoux) and all is well. The problem with MIP is that the script is merely brought to life and image as it appears that the auteur did not know what to do with it, or how to extract some juice off Gil's travels. Allen does not travel himself beyond postcard Paris and Psychology for Dummies blurbs. The beginning of the movie is so promising (long uncut takes of Gil and his fiancée, languorous pans to follow the protagonists). MIP goes on with eery college filmmaking of shot/counter-shot of stale dialogues where top talent actors seem to be wasted: they do not appear to improvise so much as they read from a cue card. By the end females are clueless to what happened to them and Gil asserts his independence. OK, vintage Allen. Is MIP a failure? Yes, partially at least. And fully overrated.