Whimsical Allen and his time-traveling taxi-cab...lovely moments abound, though it is without charming characters

Rating: 5/10 (29 January 2012)

Modern-day Hollywood screenwriter and novelist, on vacation in France with his fiancée and her parents, travels back in time to Paris in the 1920s via a magical taxi-cab, meeting legendary literary and artistic figures who help the writer put his work and his love-life into focus. Writer-director Woody Allen, seemingly in love with Paris himself, appealingly uses fantasy to both confuse and clarify reality...but without interesting, disarming central characters, the confection seems to cool early on. Stepping in for Woody, lead Owen Wilson doesn't have a dynamic screen presence (he fades into the foreground), and even the comedic scenes that should work the smoothest--such as a bit involving Rachel McAdams' missing earrings--have a bland denouement. Allen's nostalgia for the past is fun for awhile, but he doesn't use it to build momentum; fairly soon, we're stuck in a revolving door of personalities and romantic couplings, sequences which have an attractive sheen but ultimately feel a little underwhelming. ** from ****