Midnight in Paris (4 Stars - 4 Stars)

            Woody Allen is most famous for his Romantic Comedies. And what better place to talk about romance than in the city of romance itself, Paris. It's a movie about how great it was in the past and the impact it has on a writer who's on a romantic tight rope. The beginning consists of a montage of Paris shots that look as if they would appear on postcards. Woody Allen does this similar tactic with Manhattan, where he shows a montage of New York. This is crucial to the movie as it later becomes a character of its own. After all, Gil Pender, played by Owen Wilson, practically falls in love with Paris.

            In this movie, Gil and his fiancée, Inez, played by Rachael McAdams, are on a trip to Paris with Inez's parents, while working on a novel. Gil loves the city so much that he practically wants to live there while Inez wants to live in Malibu. They meet a pedantic tour guide who seems to sound like a "Pseudo-Intellectual." Although Gil seems to enjoy Paris with its art and culture, he doesn't feel happy when around Inez and the tour guide.

            What's strange about this movie is that it's a time traveling movie, and yet, it works like Groundhog Day, where there is no explanation to the fantasy elements. The character ultimately goes along for the ride and doesn't care at all on whether it's real or not. The way it works is that every midnight, a Peugeot pulls up and picks Gil up. There he gets transported to the 20's, the best time to ever be in Paris.

            The movie does a brilliant job of placing famous actors and actresses into people who were even more famous. Because Gil is transported to the 20's, he meets numerous people that most of us would all gone to love, or at least recognize. There is Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Luis Bunuel, Man Ray, T.S. Elliot, Gertrude Stein, Toulouse-Lautrec, and many more. What's interesting about them is that they are seen in their normal outgoing casual way, not like an over the top caricature of the represented person. Occasionally, there are some slip-ups that result in some inside jokes regarding the person. Ernest Hemingway speaks as though he is reading his own book, Dali acts in a surreal way by talking about Rhinoceros, and Zelda seems off the wall strange. However, Woody Allen uses these characters to his advantages and does a great job of pulling off some jokes with them. In one scene, Gil talks about a movie idea to Bunuel, causing him to say, "I don't get it," even though that seems to be the point of Surrealism.

            In my own opinion, this movie reminded me of a short film segment from Paris, Je'Taime by Wes Craven. In it, a man meets the ghost of Oscar Wilde, where he gives the man some pointers about love. To me, there is this feeling that only happens when meeting dead famous people, especially in this short segment. There is this feeling of being star struck but in a more intellectual way. I felt the same way while watching this movie. It's fun to watch people from the present interacting with famous people from the past, especially when they're star struck by Ernest Hemingway.

            Because Woody Allen is not in this movie, Owen Wilson takes his place as the Woody Allen character. Heck, he even dresses up like Woody Allen. In this movie, Gil Pender essentially plays the role of a writer who has troubles with his life. He self-reflects that his own movies are wonderful but forgettable, and he even says that he's a hack screenwriter who never really tried writing a novel. However, for the sake of argument, there are some interesting contradictions. One, Woody Allen is described as pessimistic, while in the movie, Gil seems to feel optimistic all the time, with the landscape, and meeting the various people from the 20's.

            The main theme of the movie is about the idea of living in the past and coming to terms with the present. Gil's book is about a Nostalgia shop, which essentially is what the whole movie is about. In a way, it's about a man (Woody Allen) who wants to live in the past, who writes about a man (Gil) who wants to live in the past, who also writes about a man (The Novel's protagonist) who wants to live in the past. Anyways, the movie remarks on how bad the present is, like terrorism, global warming, the bad economy, and Tea Party references. Gil sees Paris in the 20's as the best time to ever be in Paris. Most of the great authors were alive and writing books during those times, like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and T.S. Elliot, there were new interpretations of art being born in Paris, such as Cubism and Surrealism. There is a term called "The Roaring Twenties" where nothing really bad happened during that decade. Even though the theme of the movie is that they leave the past and learn to accept the present, the past is always a great tempting subject to get lost in. The way the movie shows the past makes us want to live in it. I've always wanted to sit next to Dali, Bunuel, and Man Ray, and simply talk about Surrealism.

            Through this movie, we can see that Woody Allen is in love with Paris. After watching this movie, I've come to love Paris. I'll even like the rain in Paris. The trailer said that Paris in the morning is beautiful, Paris in the afternoon is charming, Paris in the evening is enchanting, and Paris at midnight is magical. I cannot agree more with all of these statements.