Midnight in Paris (2011)

Midnight in Paris is little more than an affable-enough ride through the best and worst aspects of the modern Woody Allen. It’s essentially a feature-length love letter to its titular city, and the artistic history that surrounds it. It is about becoming bored with the operations of day-to-day Hollywood and wanting to become something less ephemeral. It is best at its most whimsical; when Allen explores the streets of Paris with undying—yet perhaps too much—adulation. It is far less effective when dealing with the interactions of several of its modern characters. There’s fun to be had, but Allen doesn’t push his premise quite as far as he should. Midnight in Paris may be more fun than most recent Allen, but it’s ultimately just as slight.

Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) is an American screenwriter who has taken a trip to Paris with his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her parents. During their trip, he spends much of his time vocally praising the beauty and history of the city. He wants to write a novel that is entirely his own rather than just another screenplay which is produced and then distributed to the public. In fact, his real desire is to just up and move to Paris, but Inez will hear none of it. She just wants to get back to America as soon as humanly possible.  He truly wishes he could live in the Paris of the ’20s, and it is this nostalgia that Midnight in Paris explores.

Ultimately—and this may spoil it for those of you who want to go in wholly ignorant—Gil is transported back to the world of ’20s Paris every night at midnight. He spends his evenings rubbing elbows with the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and more. It is here he feels entirely at home, though he starts to realize that many of these artists and writers were themselves nostalgic for times gone by. They—for the most part—did not recognize that they themselves were living in Gil’s “Golden Age.” Yet he worships them nonetheless, and he even has Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates) look over his work.

There’s a magic to these ’20s scenes that the modern day sequences lack. Where most of the humor between Gil and those around him in the modern day is of a more cringe-inducing variety, the ’20s seem more alive and innocent. A stronger film might have more openly hinted that Gil’s nostalgia is misguided. Midnight in Paris may bring it up from time to time, but there’s a distinct feeling Allen should have been harder on his central character. Wilson is quite good as Allen’s surrogate this time around, but the character he’s playing can come off as overly romantic even to those who might agree with him. Even worse is Inez, who is an absolutely hopeless character. She’s not entirely wrong in her desire to bring Gil back to Earth, but the film paints her only as a villain who despises all that is wonderful in this world. Where Gil should have faced more adversity, Inez never comes off as remotely sympathetic. McAdams does her best, but there’s just nothing there.

Yet whenever the film seems to drift too far down the wrong road, Allen is able to throw a nice little moment in—usually in the ’20s—which makes the film ultimately worthwhile. He wisely chooses not to be too serious with these sequences, and that keeps the proceedings pleasant rather than infuriating. Yet the admittedly clever conceit of the film is never used to create internal conflict within Gil’s character; it ultimately just reaffirms what he already thought. It’s obvious Allen put a lot of passion into this film—likely more than most of his work of late—but it would have benefitted the final product had he backed away from his obvious affection for all things Paris. There’s no doubt it’s a great city, but there’s even less doubt in Allen’s mind.

GRADE: B-