Midnight In Paris

Year: 2011

Grade: C

Country: USA

Director: Allen

Review

takes the simple and unprofound idea that we wish to be in a different time/place when our lives aren’t what we had hoped for. in this case it’s owen wilson who wishes he was alive during the 20s amongst the literary and artistic heavyweights of the time. eventually he realizes that everyone thinks the grass is greener on the other side at some point. it’s a simple idea that isn’t really fleshed out in any revelatory fashion. so, the rest of the film is about the characters and the jokes and neither of those were anything special. there are some literary and art references, but since i couldn’t tell you a damn thing about the private lives of hemingway or djuna barnes or zelda fitzgerald, i guess i missed much of the comedy. that said, not a lot of people around me were really laughing that much either so i don’t think anyone found the movie to be hilarious.

one character makes the observation that we wish to be in a different time because of feelings we have about the present, but he’s a pretentious butt of jokes, so is allen romanticizing the very idea of being a romantic? the ending surely would seem to bolster that view. i don’t know. overrated.

Watched in theater