Another cutie from Woody

Rating: 8/10 (31 May 2011)

Woody has a way of making romantic comedies so attractive in person and in location that you always want to be there too. I would bet that tourism to Paris increases this summer due to this film. And, Paris never looked lovelier, as the first 3 minutes of the film was a running postcard of still-shots of Paris' greatest and most beautiful sights. Just an inspired leadoff for a film full of great shots.
The idea was that the Woody character, this time the well-rumpled Owen Wilson as Gil, a frustrated novelist and Hollywood screenwriter, was half of an engaged couple who, along with his fiancé Inez' elitist parents, visit Paris. For many good reasons, he opts out of doing the sights with her parents and ends up going walking alone at midnight. He, as in a fantasy, meets a strange classic limo that stops, people inside beckon for him to get in, which he does, and he is instantly transported back to the Paris of the 20's, the era in which he always longed to live. He does this same midnight escapade again and again, and in time he wondrously meets all of the famous Paris artists of that day. These fantastic adventures determined the course of the story, which also included Michael Sheen as an arrogant, pedantic college professor friend of his fiancé that Woody, I mean Owen as Gil, detested. His fiancé? Far from it, as you will see. And, Adrien Brody was hilarious as Salvador Dali, as in "Dali!!!" and "Rhinocerous!" That part was priceless.
Gil as Woody(let's just use Woody OK?)met a couple of gorgeous women interested in a romance with him, one of them being the terminally cute Marion Cotillard(Adriana)on his visits to the 20's, and a sweet antique dealer in the present time. After finally resolving his life's troubles caused by his fiancé and by his many trips to his fantasy 20's world, Woody ended up as he should have with the right partner and the right life's direction, and apparently is still in Paris living happily ever after.
Ah, if it all could be so grand and ending just as it should, as it always does in Woody's fantasies.