Highly original and one of the better Woody Allen movies of the last few years

Rating: 8/10 (19 October 2017)

One of the more original movies I've seen in the last few years. The central plot - person gets magically transported back to Paris in the 1920s and meets some of the luminaries of the art world of that time - is very interesting and entertaining.
However, after a while it gets a bit tedious. You start to expect famous characters at every turn, and lo and behold, there they are. Salvador Dali (played by Adrien Brody) appears, for no reason other than to have an arcane semi-funny musing about a rhinoceros!
It also started to feel like everything was one big in-joke: you need to know the art world of the 1920s to follow some of the sub- plots and comments.
Thankfully, just when it looks like it is going to degenerate into Woody Allen showing us how many famous people from the 1920s he can fit into one movie, he brings things back on track, and ultimately makes a very good point.
One thing you cannot disparage about the movie is the dialogue. It contains all the usual Woody Allen neurosis and intellectual pondering, and the humour is as sharp as ever. With age, Woody Allen has become more content to reduce the number of jokes in his movies, but make them more impactful. Rather than just have a laugh-a-minute, he now takes extraordinary care and length in setting up his punchlines, so when the jokes come, they come out of the blue and with a vengeance.
Little wonder then that Woody Allen won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar.
Solid performances all round. I am not a fan of Owen Wilson, but he captured the usual Woody Allen leading character (neurotic, over- thinking, indecisive) well. Good performance too from Rachel McAdams. The supporting cast is quite star-studded - Michael Sheen, Marion Cotillard, Kathy Bates, Carla Bruni, Adrien Brody - and they don't put a foot wrong.
Worth a watch. Just bear with Mr Allen in the middle section and you will be well rewarded.