"I'm having an insight now... it's a minor one, but..."

Rating: 6/10 (22 January 2012)

Midnight In Paris can be accused of being slightly pretentious, lazy and indulgent, but then even Woody Allen's best films are slightly pretentious, lazy and indulgent. There's no real knock out factor in this one, it's just a pretty good Allen film from his modern period. However, what really holds the whole thing together is Owen Wilson playing Woody Allen (here called "Gil Pender") whose considerable charm propels what is quite a sluggish film on occasion. Sure, the entire point of this movie is not to be about pace or dynamism, but there's points where Allen's overearnest love affair with Paris becomes traveloguesque. Added to this is the perpetual self-flagellation over American identity, something else Wilson is able to achieve well.
Yet Allen seems, if not at his peak, then somewhat reinvigorated for the new decade. You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger (6), while effectively the "same old, same old", was watchable, and Midnight In Paris sees him take back up his recent predilection for filming outside New York. Incidentally, an interesting note on Allen's working methods was revealed when Michael Sheen, playing Paul, was interviewed on a UK chat show: Allen likes to pass actors only the parts of the script that relate to their characters, so Sheen had no idea his character was having an affair with that of Rachel McAdams until he saw the finished picture.
Midnight In Paris, is, without adjusting for inflation, the biggest box office success of Woody Allen's career. It's a nice movie, a fine movie, but I doubt many would put it anywhere near his ten or twelve greatest works. It just goes to show that tastes, star names, marketing and even just pure luck can factor in to what makes a "hit". After all, even adjusted to modern figures, Husbands and Wives still didn't make as much as Small Time Crooks...