A broken down one trick pony that should have been taken out the back and shot

Rating: 2/10 (6 March 2014)

In Annie Hall 40 years ago, Woody Allen constructs a scene in which he and Dianne Keaton are standing in line for a movie listening to an obnoxious idiot in front of them discussing media guru Marshall Mcluhan. Woody's character can't resist himself and confronts the idiot trying to put him right on Mcluhan's view. The argument escalates. Woody settles the argument by dragging Mcluhan into the scene from off camera and having Mcluhan finish the argument and put the idiot in his place. Woody steps up to the camera and says, "boy, if life were only like this." It's one of the most memorable scenes in the film.
Fortunately, in Annie Hall, the film moves on from that one trick, amusing and entertaining through it was.
In Midnight in Paris, a variation of the trick is resurrected, the trick is performed, but the movie doesn't move on once the trick is over.
20 minutes or so into the film, Owen Wilson's character, Gil, is out for a midnight stroll and eventually finds himself meeting F. Scott Fitzgerald in a club. Yes, amusing and an interesting premise. But ... that's it. That's pretty much the entire film. Owen going for midnight strolls in Paris and meeting famous characters from the 1920s and other eras. The Fitzgeralds, Hemingway, Picasso, Dali, and on and on an on ad infinitum. If they were famous and in Paris back in the 1920s, you'll find them recreated in this film.
But that's it. Sure, they inevitably help a little in resolving his feelings about his fiancé. And Gertrude Stein makes a few useful suggestions as to how Gil can improve his novel. But the entire film is a one-trick pony thats done its single trick long before the first 30 minutes are up and then spends the next hour just repeating the trick. I spent the next hour wondering what the point of the final hour actually was.
The whole thing could have been done in a 30 minute episode of the Twilight Zone and saved us a very painful evening. My wife gave up and read a book after 45 minutes. I should have done the same and saved myself the agony of watching the final 10 minutes. Without giving away the plot, let's just say the ending deteriorates into the kind of story line with the love interest that I would have expected one of my 10 year old students to have come up with.
What a stinker.