This is it everyone.

Rating: 10/10 (30 May 2011)

No one knows the American character like Allen, no one manages to bring it on screen like him either. This film is his best, there are way too many layers to bring everything here because there are several stories going on and the audience can pick and choose which one they will follow. They can be the American tourists in Paris "getting some art" and shopping and consequently follow the little love story Allen has utilized to tell his bigger story – that of Western thought and the role of literature in Western civilization. Sad that one has to add glitter to a film to convey a more meaningful story – but in this case his managed it well in that it doesn't take over the story. Nostalgia is one of the central themes of the movie as something that Allen has been consumed with always but now he manages to peal the onion more academically by bringing in authorities in the field who he identifies with from Hemingway (who he trivializes a little with his American bravado) to Gertrude Stein – all of whom give their 2 cents on nostalgia, life, art and existence in the terms that Allen has been obsessing throughout his career. Why would anyone give this film less than maximum points is beyond me, not because Allen is the greatest living American thinker but because no other film, at least in the last few years, has managed to capture what 21st century humans have become in the context of timeneurotic, anxious and superficial.