over-rated fluff

Rating: Null/10 (27 July 2011)

I went to "Midnight in Paris" full of warnings that I'd like the scenes of Paris but the film wasn't much. The warnings were basically correct. Although inoffensive and even occasionally humorous (e.g., the Hemingway parody), the film was just too silly and unbelievable to be a paean to a great city. The moral of the story is hardly original or profound: don't live in the past, and the time-travel gimmick was cute but more cleverly done in Back to the Future. Worst of all, Allen confuses characterization with caricature, from the protagonist's uncaring fiancée and her right-wing father and money-consumed mother to the comic-book pseudo-intellectual ex-boyfriend. As to the Woody Allen main character: he was so naïve that no one could possibly believe he was an experienced and successful Hollywood writer—he seemed more like the editor of his high school newspaper. Why any women (let alone two perfectly normal Parisian women—the only appealing characters in the whole film) were attracted to him was a mystery, as was why he and his fiancée ever got beyond a first date, having so little in common. As I was walking home from the theater, I was trying to figure out why even the many scenes of Paris didn't particularly affect me emotionally. After all, it's a city I love, my favorite in the world and one I've visited many times. Then it dawned on me that the Paris I love could not be the same Paris loved by that doofus of a main character. The only remaining mystery is why the critics have lavished praise on this very mediocre film, one that they'd probably trash were it not a Woody Allen film. My only answer is that they are somehow relieved that the Woody Allen who has produced so many pretentiously "intellectual" films is reduced to turning out routine Hollywood fluff.