Weaker Woody

Rating: 4/10 (25 August 2013)

Midnight in Paris looks and feels great. But there's not enough substance under that haze of nostalgic charm.
The premise is up there with Woody's best: a frustrated writer pines for the glory days of between-the-wars Paris. Then he (inexplicably) time-travels, and has a chance to learn about writing, and life, from the likes of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Unfortunately, those tips are really not very interesting. In fact, after about the halfway point, they seem to dwindle away, as our hero gets more caught up in the practicalities of time-travel, and the romantic entanglements. The ending, when it arrives, is a let-down - an ancient sci-fi clichÃ©, that pays off on none of the film's early promise. (I felt like I'd time traveled back to the 1960s and met Rod Serling.)
Owen Wilson, one of the most annoying screen personalities of all time, turns in a mercifully subdued, un-mannered performance, for once. The rest of the cast is even better, and it's fun to see Adrien Brody as Salvador Dali, or Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein. But these celebrity cameos are too rushed; we never really get any insight into these admittedly fascinating historical personalities.
Midnight in Paris does have a wonderfully romantic look and feel, but its true potential is never achieved. It's a pleasant, but unfulfilling way to spend 90 minutes.