Midnight in Woodyland
If you thought Woody Allen waxed poetic about New York City on film, wait until you settle into your seat to see Midnight in Paris.
Allen’s latest effort, hastily dubbed a return to form by his gooey admirers, is a love letter to the City of Light. It also sees fit to mock Republicans, tea partiers, and anyone who thinks having a mistress might be unethical.
Watching a new Allen movie is akin to seeing the artist’s psyche laid bare. We know too much about the off-screen Allen, from his morally repugnant romance with then-girlfriend Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter to his support for admitted child rapist Roman Polanski.
It puts his movies in a less flattering light. And, frankly, Allen’s current projects can’t measure up to his older, better films.
In Midnight in Paris, Owen Wilson plays a flustered screenwriter named Gil visiting Paris with his fiancee, Inez (Rachel McAdams).
Gil is entranced by everything Paris has to offer, but he really longs to be in the Paris of the 1920s, a time when some of the greatest writers in history roamed the streets.
“I’m a Hollywood hack who never gave literature a real shot until now,” he wails.
One drunken night, a vintage car drives up to Gil and its passengers insist he hop in. A few minutes later Gil is hobnobbing with the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and swapping stories with Ernest Hemingway.
Gil’s initial shock of being next to his literary idols quickly turns to merriment. Why question the time space continuum when you can pester Hemingway for writing tips?
The next day Gil finds himself back in modern day Paris along with his unpleasant fiancée, but every night he makes an excuse to revisit the city block where that magical car escorted him back in time. And, sure enough, the car keeps reappearing right on schedule.
But can Paris’ romanticized past deliver a meaningful future for Gil? And will he find true love with Picasso’s current squeeze (Marion Cotillard, who delivers the most enchanting performance in the movie)?
Midnight in Paris begins like a tourist video, with Allen rotating a series of static shots of the city in action. Yawn. The pedestrian start would be entirely forgivable if that old Allen spark were soon to follow.
The film’s big message is telegraphed early in the film by a minor character, and you’ll have to wait another 80-plus minutes to hear it announced once more. For a filmmaker who calls out pseudo-intellectuals at every turn, his latest feature simply isn‘t very bright.
The time traveling conceit here is creaky but amusing, and certainly reminiscent of Allen‘s ‘80s comedy The Purple Rose of Cairo, without being outright theft.
It’s fine that Allen stocks the romanticized past with cartoon versions of so many famous personalities. Hemingway tells war stories, Zelda and F. Scott bicker. Gertrude Stein lords over a pit stop for creative souls. Adrien Brody plays Salvador Dali with a comic gleam in his eye, ruminating over silly notions as if he were on the cusp of splitting the atom.
It might have made for a more intriguing film had these characters ended up like real people, but Allen is clearly gunning for fantasy here, and the cast is having a ball.
But did Allen have to fill the rest of the movie with cartoons, too? Poor McAdams bears the brunt of Allen’s wrath. She’s a shrill partner, constantly putting Gil down and talking up her uber-intellectual pal (Michael Sheen).
Inez’s parents, begrudgingly in Paris to cinch a business deal, might as well be labeled Ugly Americans 1 and 2.
“France is no friend of the U.S.,” the father informs Gil early in the film, setting up a crude political discussion with the liberal-loving scribe that arrives out of nowhere. This sucker punch, as John Nolte of Big Hollywood would call it, doesn’t move the story forward a single inch.
“You almost gotta be a demented lunatic” to be a Republican, Gil cries before adding to Inez how much he respects her father‘s views. Later, in a recalled conversation which makes no sense, we learn Gil called tea partiers “crypto fascist airhead zombies.”
It’s an odd statement from an auteur who wishes President Barack Obama had dictator-style powers for a spell.
Wilson is genetically appealing, a fine outside the box choice to play an Allen surrogate. He manages to mimic the writer/director’s tics, but it’s not the out and out imitation attempted by Kenneth Branagh in Celebrity. He’s still stuck with a rather unlikable character, a spoiled brat with a fragile ego.
It’s one thing that Allen’s films use the same font — again — for the opening credits, or that he embraces his standard, scratchy jazz scores for his films. But Midnight in Paris reveals an artist stuck in his own version of the past, one without the artistry to deliver his comic visions.
I have to say I just love Woody Allen and his films
Cheers
Oscar
http://cafeikøbenhavn.dk/
I have to say I USED to love Woody and his films. His early work and his short stories taught me how to write more than any other writer’s work ever did.
But it all fell apart years ago. “Hollywood Ending” was utter crap. It was like there was no damned script at all and the actors were left to “experiment” with improv and rambling – and not one of them had the talent for it.
“Vicky, Christina, Barcelona” was just about one of the worst-written films I’ve ever seen. I actually laughed out loud at some of the bland narration, it was so horrendous. “They walked around the city and saw lots of things.” Ouch!
“Match Point” was “Crimes & Misdemeanors” all over again. “Crimes…” is one of my favorite films of all time. “Match Point”: a lame remake. Curious.
Anyone remember “Scoop”? Lifeless and forgettable. He does a lot of that recently.
And from the sound of it, I have no desire to see this new thing. Why doesn’t Woody just have his characters look directly into the camera and bellow, “Right wing people are dumb and evil!”? It’s nearly at that point now.
A writer who once had wit is now so ham-handed with his one-sided political attacks that he’s actually managed to make his career arc into a journey from Best Writer to Worst.
In his day Woody Allen was an extremely funny droll comedian but as a left wing moonbat he is just not funny at all just pathetic.
Two words to describe W.A. a sicko and a perv.
It makes you wonder why they need to make those negative political statements like Paul McCartney at the white house dissing George Bush.
What do they get back for it? Do they think they’ll be treated better by some people? They don’t need that or do they?
You have hit upon the basic foundation of socialism without, perhaps, realizing it. If you remember, conservatives not only want to do well themselves, but also want others to do well. Naturally competitive, they tend to bring out the best in themselves and in others.
Socialists, on the other hand, hate themselves and despise competition. They only find joy in sharing with others the people they hate. In that, they find some form of unity.
Conservatives generally don’t like people who take advantage, who steal, who lie and who aren’t credible. But they don’t focus their awake-time dolling out imagined punishments for them nor do they feel the need to spend much time even criticizing them as they usually have much more productive things to do.
Socialists, on the other hand set up whole entities to attempt to destroy those they see as their enemy. Their obsessive/compulsive nature to keep hate alive and active is necessary to feed the beast. They think neither objectively nor critically but only emotionally. Their inability to assess things, both in their own lives as well as on a grander scale speaks loudly to why we’re in the mess(es) we are. From unemployment to foreign affairs, all things that are now subject to the socialists manipulations, aggravated by intellectual elites who’ve never done a day’s work in real life are now at disaster levels with no end in sight.
This supposed “inherited from Bush” idea has now morphed into, “Well if you inherited it from Bush, you’ve made it 100 times worse and whoever comes after will truly inherit a monumental mess.”
But the socialists will always go about their way, convinced they are right, regardless of the world of evidence to the contrary.
Woody Allen is a cosmopolite. Look it up. He never touches ground in America unless his plane has to emergency-land in flyover country. NYC is not only not America, it is anti-America. Noo Yawkers hate Americans and America. NYers are either natives, who know nothing about America (except that it’s bad), or immigrants from America, who can’t fit in with normal people, and so flee to the big behavior-sink on the Hudson (the Left Coast is the equivalent destination for oddballs, freaks, and square-pegs, of course).
Ah yes, I have noticed how the conservatives here do not waste their time bashing liberals or Obama. You were making a joke, right?
Sounds like Woody Allen’s “THE SHINING.”
The postmillennial Woody Allen seems sick and impotent.
I’d always suspected Allen was a Mamet-styled closet Conservative.
His earlier movies, “when he was funny,” sneak in many right-leaning aspects.
Boff, another unseful article
Finally. Something from Woody Allen. And he even takes the time to “mock Republicans and tea Partiers”.
You really haven’t ever been mocked, until an Geriatric New York City Liberal Jew, Pedophile, who used to spend his nights porking his ADOPTED DAUGHTER, before finally MARRYING HER, mocks you.
This pedophile is still making movies? The sad part about Allen is that, I doubt many young people under the age of 40 today even know who Hemingway, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein are, let alone what they did. This would be like my grandfather making a movie, and it’s starting to show. As for his rank anti-Republican and anti-Tea Party comments, what would you expect from a guy who see nothing wrong in what Roman Polanski did? Like, I’m going to worry about what this piece of liberal trash thinks? This guy really needs to retire in New York City and be one of those guys you see on the Central Park benches every day screaming about socialism. That would suit him better than making really dull movies that few people want to watch. It will be on Cable in two months.
Liberals are chronical NYMBYS, LibShip, and Woody Allen is a perfect illustration of this –
When the USA has reached the shape they militated for, they suddenly discovered that they don’t like it, and returned to older grazing grounds – like Allen, who discovers that a pre-multicultural Paris is a more pleasant station than the grating megalopolises of New York city and Los Angeles – big news -
Paris, Europe – but heavens, it was just a few years ago when the liberals were running around, foamy-mouthed screaming about the European colonial atrocities and about the complete meritlessness of the European art or civilizations when compared with the Yamonamo’s -
And now, they are transfigured, sipping fine lattes in cafes in Paris, Berin, Milano or Prague, respond to the local tranquil vibration, it’s good to be an American in Europe (as long you’re not in the US army), find only pleasant and positive things there, compared with the stench of vulgarity and strife coming from the multicultural USA -
The liberals have discovered the future in America (much of it of their making) and don’t like it – and Woody Allen is part of a growing trend of liberals that began to resent their ideological creation – hehehe –
LA Times has strangely changed the tune lately, too, and in the past weeks they came with several pieces, one of them by Neal Gabler waxing about the jarring lack of commity in the country (ignoring that the brutal change in American demographics caused by liberal immigration policies has caused this) – or another one reminiscind, a Norman Rockwell, “Anglo-saxon” America (believe it or not, but Los Angeles Times is deploring the disappearance of the Main street America – hehehe – they even used in favorable light the notions of ‘protestant/ puritan ethics” – hehehe -)
Woody Allen is a flake and his work is fluff – his latest, post-Gershwin Paris nostalgia piece show this perfectly -
Why give the time of day to a scumbag?
Helluvva babysitter, too. Why anyone would want to do anything short of blowing there nose on this guy is beyond me.
He always wanted to be Chaplain, now he’s worse.
Well, dammit. Woody’s got another movie out and I’m bound to see it. I don’t know what it is about this Svengali. Though I find his personal life loathsome, I somehow have to see what the old goat is up to whenever he shoots another film.
My biggest problem with Woody’s movies of the past 20 years or so, is that they’re all the same: the main character longing for an unattainable life, which is never mature but always self-indulgently adolescent.
Woody Allen’s never grown up. He’s the perpetual Peter Pan and, as such, he’s the perpetual bore as a filmmaker. Allen needs a spiritual awakening, an epiphany, a conversion. He needs metanoia — that is, to be turned around, to see the world in a completely different light because, as it is, his “vision” is tiresome, myopic, decadent, and increasingly narcissistic, if that’s possible.
I’m getting tired of being sucked into Woody’s small, cramped, and crabby world. I think I’ll wait until Midnight in Paris comes out on DVD.
Woody Allen reminds me of the 5th-century B. C. Greek artist Parrhasius, who once painted a picture that made people feel spiritually polluted when they saw it — they iimediately felt the need for purification.
I don’t not wish to imply that Woody Allen is an artist; he’s not.
I think I’ll wait until it comes out on DVD, then skip it. The reviews certainly don’t make it sound appealing. Woody Allen’s movies are rather like a wedding cake, with himself in the center at the top. Lower concentric layers are the intellectual circles he lives in. As far as he’s concerned, no one else exists except to watch his movies.
As far as I know, he never made a movie about military life or war. Or one about rural people. Or blue collar workers. Or a married couple who weren’t neurotic. Or athletes. Or set a dramatic movie in any period of history but his own, or in a Third World country. No, he has produced and usually acted in nothing but movies about neurotic New York intellectuals who mostly work in show business. Throwing in a slap at politically conservative Americans now and then isn’t the most objectionable part of his work, it’s actually his inability to produce anything that isn’t self-referential.
Tell Woody to shut up or we’ll find some real Neo-Nazis to play with.
For sure Woodie Allen does not make movies for me. I have yet to be able to sit through a full movie of his. he just bores me. His shtick as a comedian ore itself out in about 5 minutes – been done better before – and I just do not find him funny at all. That whole genre that he portrays – the neurotic Jewish schlemiel who is henpecked by his wife and his mother both is all he does. He throws something else in once in a while but the neurotic Jew is all he really does. BORING!!
Woody Allen? Oh, you mean Allen Stewart Konigsberg. Didn’t his adopted daughter name him WOODY for some reason?
A broken and small man.
Woody Allen struggles with his immoral choices and an intelligent conscience that informs him that his choices are wrong.
In short, Allen feels guilty.
Allen’s creative struggle – and his muse — is this desire to assuage his guilt – to square the circle – to somehow make pedophilia palatable, OK.
His film “Crimes and Misdemeanors” was the most honest of his films — not including his early comedies. The message in this film was that time and distance minimizes/erases all crime, even the most heinous.
But time and distance didn’t fix Allen’s guilty conscience. Allen’s still alive – and his crimes are still bothering him – so he’s now trying to rationalize his pedophilia through romanticization. Again.
This need to assuage guilt explains his obsession with Catholicism as well.
Here’s a suggestion for Woody Allen – go full hog and convert to Catholocism. Honestly confess your sins and be forgiven. How’s that for creativity!
I was never a fan of Woody Allen. His comedies were badly done slapstick. He is a failure and what’s worse for him he knows how badly he’s failed. His films are invariably filled with nonentities does that tell us anything?
Woody Allen doesnt have anything to say any more. He was a brilliant stand up comedian . His early films were amusing . Few indeed are those who can be funny or even witty over 50 years . Woody is rich now and morally bankrupt. He has proven to have no self control . When he is honest with himself he must be disgusted with what he has made of his sucess. By his own actions he is exiled to the company of others as debased and repugnant as he is . His life is a tragedy , so it is no wonder that his films aren’t funny. If he could bear to look upon himself honestly he has the material for a sad film , of human weakness , betrayal and how the loss of morality entails the loss of creativity.
Woody who?? Oh! Yes, THAT Woody!!! The one of the “orgasmotron” fame and his romance with Mia Farrow’s sibling. Another liberal (marxist) movie type. Why are we even listening this rambling, babbling, anti American. Mr. Allen should put his thoughts in writing. Publish them in the Village Voice for his followers and minions to ooooh! and aaaah! over. They’ll perpetrate his “insightful” sayings, babblings and meadering thoughts. I know!!! Michael Moore and Woody Allen…a publishers ‘dream team’ or ‘dynamic duo.’
[...] Paris of the 1920s, a time when some of the greatest writers in history roamed the streets. [...]
Toto should return to college and take a class world literature in order to get a better grasp as to when and where the greatest writers of history ever roamed the steets of Paris (in the 1920-s!)-
Nor even the French would go for this inane cliche – Toto appears as clueless as Allen’s character in matters literary-
WELL, YOU DID CENSOR ME BUT IT WAS WORTH IT
Sounds like another bomb for Allen. The only reason for this movie even getting the backing is ageing Baby Boomers still think this guy is still “hip”. I dought if most people under forty even care about Woody Allen.His time is over. A new Woody Allen movie sounds about exciting to todays generation as a new Johnny Ray album was to the “Woodstock” generation!
Woody Allen is a vile, slimey, disgusting, evil, creepy, pedo pile of dung.
That is all.
I think I will pass on this one. But you cannot deny that Woody Allen has done some brilliant work in his career. My favorite is the lesser known film “Broadway Danny Rose”. There is a lot of humor in the film and a lot of common man nobility and humanity in his character.
However, it is a common conceit of both “artists” and “liberal champions of the downtrodden” that they just can’t be expected to live up to behavioral standards set by society that they find inconvenient in their personal lives. After all, look at everything they are doing for us. That’s why the liberals so readily excuse Bill Clinton for inserting his cigar in an intern, Timothy Geithner for cheating on taxes and their politicians continually violate laws and circumventing checks and balances in Government. But they can’t see how wrong they are about so many things and in the end it is just a lot of self-indulgent, self-serving conceit.
Woody Allen’s early movies were good and I certainly have enjoyed them. His best movie IMO was Annie Hall (Sleeper is second) but for me this is because Diane Keaton was in it. In the past 15-20 years his movies are simple repeats of the earlier movies and are nothing but a rewrite of those early successes. He’s like the rock band that just couldn’t find that new sound but Woody has fooled the pseudo-intellectual crowd with his offering for the past 20 years or more – not a big feat to be sure.
What the hell – it’s been a great living for him.
Written by Terence Mallick! Directed by Lars von Trier! Starring Woody Allen, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon! The story of a family that engages in the grossest, foulest, most vile and disgusting acts ever put on film!
The Euristocrats!
But Allen IS “a spoiled brat with a fragile ego”.
I am a big-time conservative and tea party member and I am appalled at the lack of grace shown by this article. Can’t you get over the fact that Woody Allen is a relentless liberal and just enjoy this movie? The sets are great, the characters are accurately portrayed and the dialog is wonderfully fun and that includes Gil’s comments about the tea party, which are definitely not to be taken seriously. Come on, this is a chance to lighten up an laugh a little.
Actually I’ve always thought Woody Allen was a pitiful soul and his previous movies were not actually entertaining as much as they were a window into a very tortured and damaged soul. He’s little more than a classic NY’er w/ the provincial condescending, paranoiac viewpoints and the typical inhibited but robust passive/aggressive tendencies. From this movie review I think it’s obvious that Woody now has made his epitaph, possibly last feature film more appropriately titled “I Could’a Been Somebody”. I’ll not be surprised if Woody finally manages to find the courage to commit suicide.
My advice to Woody would be to escape from the depression that is NYC and visit with the rest of America, the people who actually make this country great….your fans and non-fans would appreciate a bit of diversity.