A fresh take on the done-to-death themes of love, Paris, and time-travel.

Rating: 7/10 (24 June 2011)

This is not a romantic comedy. Romantic comedies are incredibly stupid, and this was actually quite intelligent.
I didn't know the plot of this movie coming in, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the time travel theme was not overtly gimmicky, with humor not entirely derived from the awkwardness of people from two different eras coming together. The stupefied utterances of "What? We're where? You're WHO?" were kept to a minimum from the protagonist, thankfully, and not seen at all from the historical characters. Since the movie does not focus on a fish out of water aspect, the time travel serves as a literal picture of the pursuit of "the golden age" that people nostalgically view various eras throughout history.
Put into the eye of Gil's romantic view of Paris, we are given generous, gorgeous views of the city both past and present, with a great amount of detail put into sets that are seen for no more than a few minutes. The historical figures are amusing, providing some excellent one- liners, the more you know about the time period, the better.
Owen Wilson could pull off the naive character well, Rachel McAdams was nearly too perfect as the annoying one, and Marion Cotillard of course, was very French.
Overall, the movie might have been a tad formulaic, and the characters bit flat. This movie is light, visually stimulating and enjoyable, yet it presents its material with enough depth to make us think about humanity's desperate longing for a past that never was.