AND HEMINGWAY PUNCHED ME IN THE MOUTH...

Rating: 10/10 (4 December 2018)

WARNING: I GIVE YOU HEAVY CLUES/HINTS ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS AT MIDNIGHT WHICH TAKES PLACE EARLY IN THE FILM. I DO NOT CONSIDER THIS TO BE A "SPOILER" BUT OTHERS MIGHT.
The film opens with a lengthy jazz tune while showing us the splendor, romance, and fantasy of Paris to set the mood. Owen Wilson plays Gil, a role Woody Allen wrote for his alter-ego. He is a Hollywood hack writer wanting nothing more than to be a struggling novelist living in Paris in the 1920's. He is engaged to Inez (Rachel McAdams). Like Woody's other main characters, he recognizes when people are pretentious and pseudo-intellectuals such as Inez's friends. This is a running theme in his productions either in front of or behind the camera. Hint: If you couldn't understand why Allen is a genius from his other films, feel free to skip this one.
Gil desires to move to Paris. Inez is somewhat Republican and can't imagine living anywhere but the USA. One evening the two couples are out. Three of them want to go dancing while Gil does not. Instead he opts to take a nice leisurely stroll back to the hotel. Unfortunately he didn't drop any bread crumbs and like too many Americans in Paris he doesn't speak French so he can't ask for directions. (If you have ever been to Paris you know all those French can speak English, but won't because they enjoy watching us struggle with their language.)
Then at midnight...Allen creates a whole movie around one of his old stand up comedy bits come to be known as "The Lost Generation" [...] which goes like this:
"I mentioned before that I was in Europe. It's not the first time that I was in Europe, I was in Europe many years ago with Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway had just written his first novel, and Gertrude Stein and I read it, and we said that is was a good novel, but not a great one, and that it needed some work, but it could be a fine book. And we laughed over it. Hemingway punched me in the mouth.
"That winter Picasso lived on the Rue d'Barque, and he had just painted a picture of a naked dental hygenist in the middle of the Gobi Desert. Gertrude Stein said it was a good picture, but not a great one, and I said it could be a fine picture. We laughed over it and Hemingway punched me in the mouth.
"Francis Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald came home from their wild new years eve party. It was April. Scott had just written Great Expectations, and Gertrude Stein and I read it, and we said it was a good book, but there was no need to have written it, 'cause Charles Dickens had already written it. We laughed over it, and Hemingway punched me in the mouth.
"That winter we went to Spain to see Manolete fight, and he was... looked to be eighteen, and Gertrude Stein said no, he was nineteen, but that he only looked eighteen, and I said sometimes a boy of eighteen will look nineteen, whereas other times a nineteen year old can easily look eighteen. That's the way it is with a true Spaniard. We laughed over that and Gertrude Stein punched me in the mouth."
Light, funny, entertaining...a romantic comedy by a stretch of the definition.