Really, really liked it.

Rating: 9/10 (30 December 2011)

I gotta admit that I am compelled to rate this picture very positively. My wife had seen it and really liked it (I hadn't).
Then we ran into Woody Allen in NYC (I profess pompously) and I told him it was brilliant and he thanked me, so I have to stand behind this... It's brilliant. Owen Wilson (Gil) fills in admirably for Woody in the role of the slightly befuddled nebbish who falls in love at the drop of a coquettish smile by an ephemeral waif of a girl.
The story is exceptionally likable and so are the players. What I liked best were the characterisations of the historical figures. Kathy Bates was a perfect Stein, Brody was as good a Dali as one could be, Corey Stoll a robust Hemingway, etc.
But, a couple of little things did bother me.
One was that Adriana's written memoir of their making love, read by Gil in the present, didn't actually occur. Also, what happened to his book? If Stein and Hemingway both liked it, why wasn't it published?
Another is that it wrapped up too quickly with Gil leaving his fiancée and hooking up with another girl in a wink of an eye and not trying to revisit the past again. I would.
Other than that, it is brilliant. I was prescient, I guess.