Miracle on the Boulevard Haussman (spoiler)

Rating: Null/10 (29 October 2011)

It's not a bad Woody Allen film, it's not a bad film for people of a certain age with a certain level of education - Woody Allen fans, in other words. If you see MIP in a comfortable cinema with nice company you'll probably enjoy it. It will absorb you if you let it. Owen Wilson does a good job as an aspiring 'serious' writer on a pre-nuptial family vacation in Paris conflicted by his desire to follow the writer's path against his impending marriage to a self-absorbed WASP heiress.
I do wonder that Woody wasn't credited as 'Mr. Wilson's voice coach', because once again his leading man appears to have been instructed to do an impression of the director, and it's to Wilson's credit that he makes this work.
A simple enough premise - Gil Pender (Wilson) is regularly picked up by a vintage limo at midnight and transported to 1920's Paris where he runs into most of the cultural icons of that time, who help him both with his novel and his love life. The best turn is Adrian Brody as Salvador Daleeeee!, but most of the cameos (Picasso, F. Scott Fitzgerald, etc.) are very convincing. Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein is not so good, she just comes over as a Midwestern community support worker - the character could have stood a lot more edginess and neurosis, considering how important she is in the script. Eventually he falls in love with - sorry, can't remember the name, and that's an illustration of how 2-dimensional the character is - Hemingway/Picasso's girl, and realises he wants to stay in Paris, unlike his fiancée who wants a Malibu beach house.
And this is where the ending of the film lets you down, because Gil and - sorry, can't remember the name, and that's an illustration of how 2-dimensional the character is - his fiancée have a fairly tame argument and he walks out of the hotel. That's it. The climax. Luckily he meets up with the extremely cute (and extremely badly acted) girl who runs the nostalgia shop where he's been picking up Cole Porter 78s. Sorry Woody, this is one-o-one scriptwriting. When he and fiancée split, there needs to be more at stake than just mild inconvenience. The supernatural premise is allowed to carry the film, and it's well staged enough to satisfy most of the way, but the story fizzles out. The fact is, the characters are not developed enough for any sort of deeper conflict to arise. The female characters are particularly thinly drawn, especially Carla Bruni (joke). Speaking of bad acting, Carla Bruni as a tour guide does manage to be better than Madonna. Just.
Good music, good scenery, a few good gags (the French PI steals the end) and a few wry observations of Americans abroad, MIP will suspend your disbelief and leave you feeling warm inside. If it were Goldilocks' porridge, she'd like the taste and temperature, but think it a little thin.