"Why don't we make a Jewish movie set in Paris with Christian characters?"

Rating: 1/10 (25 February 2012)

Starting with Owen Wilson's twitchy ongoing imitation of Woody Allen himself as Gil, every situation involving his grabby neurotic fiancÃ©e Inez (a perfect JAP if there ever was one), and her supposedly WASPY Tea Party parents (who come off more like a suspicious Scarsdale dentist and his shrewish Haddassah wife) MIDNIGHT IN Paris is an amusing ethnic exercise primarily because Woody Allen doesn't know that's what he has written.
It would be nice if Wilson's "blastoff into the past" didn't include constant ahistorical errors like "Hemingway" interrupting spouts of unintentionally parodic passages of Hemingway prose to discuss rhino hunting and bullfighting years before he had any exposure to either, and decamping to Kilimanjaro with Wilson's love interest (Marie Cotilard), years before he had ever been to Africa and while he was still living happily with first wife Hadley whose trust fund checks were barely keeping them alive.
But what the hell. Watching Wilson/Woody Allen's constant bug-eyed "Gee whizzes" as each celeb from the past (Fitzgerald, Dali, etc.) went into their star turn was unintentionally hilarious... rather like a reprise of the beginning of the guided tour of Jurassic Park, but the one truly touching sequence when Wilson/Woody somehow caught the right carriage to take a Marie Cotillard to her dream "golden age" to Maxim's and the Moulin Rouge of the Belle epoque made it all almost worth it.
Worth an Academy Award for the blurry postcard color of daytime Paris and the ability to pull the Woody Allen claque together behind a far inferior movie to the marvelous VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA... .
THis is a lousy movie, but given the ethnic makeup of Hollywood, it is over-praised and at least Woody made some money this time.