Allen in Paris.

Rating: 6/10 (10 June 2015)

Midnight in Paris (2011): Dir: Woody Allen / Cast: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Michael Sheen, Marion Cotillard, Tom Hiddleston: Ravishing revisiting of those historical moments that spellbind our thoughts. Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams play engaged couple Gil and Inez who join her parents in Paris but he desires the Paris of the 1920's that homed his literary heroes as opposed to the modern highlights. While Inez goes dancing with friends, Gil, at the strike of midnight is picked up in an old style car and whisked into the 1920's Paris where he holds humorous conversations with Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and his fragile wife Zelda, Cole Porter, and Gertrude Stein who offers to read his novel. Woody Allen doesn't give reason as to why this occurs but he asks that we bask in the old style beauty of Paris just as Gil does. This is not one of his great films like Everyone Says I Love You and Small Time Crooks but it is charming and often funny. Wilson plays off an unfulfilled screenwriter longing for a mystical past and embarks on pure fantasy. McAdams is unfortunately underused and seems there only to be hinted in an affair with her friend Paul, played by Michael Sheen. These roles seems like a bypass thought that needed more build. The literary characters are grand, particularly Marion Cotillard whose presence seduces Gil's wonderment until she comes to some realities of her own. Many literary characters including Tom Hiddleston playing F. Scott Fitzgerald. The literary references will make big Allen fans enjoy this midnight stroll in Paris. Score: 6 / 10