Midnight in Paris

Everyone seems to adore the latest work from Woody Allen. Wish I could join the masses, but alas, independent thinker that I am, I must beg to differ. Midnight in Paris has some charm, but for me, it lacked a good story and depth.

Here are the positives: The shots of Paris are wonderful. The scenes of the streets, bars, monuments, and cafes take us to the grand city of Europe as only film can. The background music, light and frothy, charms. Two lovely women grace the screen, as seen above. In fact, Rachel McAdams and Marion Cotillard dazzle the male viewers! OK, overall, good aesthetics. Nice faces. Nice scenery.

Storywise? Nonsense, to be sure. The general setting of a mismatched, engaged couple staying in Paris and bickering is far from pleasant...and seems to have no redeeming plot value. The time travel element? Uh, hardly up to the standards of, say, The Time Traveler's Wife or Millenium. The meet-the-past-idols theme? Maybe acceptable for viewers who say, wow, there's that lady I think I've heard of, Gertrude Stein. For more learned viewers, the interactions with past famous people lacks any semblance of meaningful dialog.

Then there's Woody Allen's voice. I have avoided the past two decades of Allen-by-Allen films, that is, movies that reflect the neurotic, NY-ish, cloying, sickening ego of the filmmaker. Hoping to find an exception, I returned to this film. Allen was all over it. Misunderstood male, pseudo-liberalism, mock idealism....it's all there again.

So I would give the film a grade of C. Just hope my readers won't tar and feather me for being so divergent from the public that raves endlessly about this insipid piece of filmmaking.

Probably worth seeing just to decide if David is right or wrong!