Midnight in Paris - 30th May 2011

There's a lot of crap talked about Woody Allen. Critics talk about his 'Early funny ones', his 'shaky recent out put' and his 'European period'. When reviewing a Woody Allen film apparently you have to either critique his 40+ years of work in one big impossible whole, line him up against other film makers, attempt to pigeon hole him or write him off completely. It's true that in the following review I do fall victim to some of those cliches because it's almost impossible not to but what I mean and what I actually attempt to do is, his films are hardly ever reviewed individually for what they are and this is either because the critic has nothing to say about the film they've actually just seen or they are too busy longing for a bygone time that they think no longer exists, which, funnily enough is rather apt in the case of Midnight in Paris.

We'll never know if this film was an attempt to make an early funny one with hints of dramedy stuff like Annie Hall and the lush period visuals of Bullets over Broadway whilst all the time secretly satirising and mocking the critics for not being able to live in the present. If it is then Woody may indeed be the genius he so frequently claims that he's not, if it isn't then it's a simple and charming film about the artistic and maybe just human condition that nobody wants to live in the present and every artist secretly yearns for rain drizzled Parisian streets.

Whatever it is or was meant to be, it has succeeded in being, just in box office terms the most successful Woody Allen movie of all time. I saw it a couple of weeks into its run and it is still playing at my local multiplex now, over a month later and when I went to see Horrible Bosses the other night there were still crowds of people exiting the Woody film and not just the bearded, corduroy wearing sociology professor you might expect but a broad cross section of the public. At one point the same theatre had dedicated 2 screens to it! 

Just to put this in contrast when I went to see Whatever Works, which had the pull of being the first film Woody set in New York in 5 years, starring Larry David who is a highly successful writer and star now and the one actor everyone thought should've been working with Woody all along and was, for my money, the first actually really funny comedy he'd done since Deconstructing Harry, I managed to find one art house cinema that was screening it for maybe two weeks if that and the showing I was in I think the audience was about 3 people, maybe one old Dutch woman with a poodle as well, I can't be sure.

It doesn't really make any sense who goes to see what and why but it's just nice to know that, in this world of Transformers, vomiting bridesmaids and the excitement some people seemed to get from almost seeing Jennifer Aniston's nipple, a Woody Allen film not even starring his most starry of casts and set in a country most Americans (and to be fair most Brits also) despise, full of in jokes and references about authors, artists and musicians from over 70 years ago can be so, financially at least, successful.  

So, what is the film actually like? I hear you cry. Well, it's not bad. I don't think it's a classic to be honest but it's not bad. 

The cinematography is, as always, excellent and both modern Paris and the Paris of the past look stunningly beautiful. 

The script is, if I am honest, a little contrived, obvious and devoid of subtlety. It's very funny, has a great little point to make and it makes it understandably and simply but there isn't the quick fire one liners and the dialogue that lets the human drama unfold and play out realistically. Everything is sign posted with a sledge hammer. 

Owen Wilson is likable enough and doesn't attempt to get his Texas nasality around too much of a Woody impersonation, like a lot of other leading men have done in his position, he can, however, be a tad one-note in the part though and his character is not exactly convincingly drawn. He spends a lot of the film just doing enthusiasm or wide eyed wonder and not particularly convincing at that, I do not see prose that would impress Gertrude Stein coming out of that man.

Still he has more to work with than Rachel MacAdams who is not exactly given much to do and it does border almost on insulting how thinly written, flat-out annoying, shrill and stereotypical her character is, for the man who has always been applauded for writing female characters so well I was actually a bit surprised at the sitcom nature of the 'nagging fiance who has nothing in common with her hubby to be' character she was weakly forced to inhabit.

The only other person with a significant lead is Marion Cortillard who almost pulls a Penelope Cruz in Vicky Christina Barcelona here by being the token foreign actress who swoops in and shows up everyone else, unfortunately she doesn't get a grand amount of screen time in which to swoop. 

Everyone else is a cameo and from Kurt Fuller as the hilariously republican soon-to-be father-in-law right down to the scene-everyone-is-talking-about featuring Adrian Brody as a batty, rhinoceros obsessed Salvador Dali they are all pretty splendid although I honestly felt each character could've had a lot more jokes attached to them.

There was an article recently about whether Woody Allen was a genius, where he sat in the long line of cinema auteurs like his beloved Bergman. Well Midnight in Paris suffers from the problem a lot of his work suffers from and what, I think, stops him earning the 'genius' tag completely and that is laziness.  

Now you may think it's odd I say laziness as he is 76 and has a schedule where he still writes and directs one movie a year every year and has done for at least three and a half decades but what I mean is it feels like he's either not giving himself the time, or really can't be bothered to fully form an idea anymore or to maybe do a few re-writes or polishes of his scripts. 

This maybe because he doesn't need to. 

He gets enviable casts, support from his peers, has a dedicated fan base around the world, doesn't do atrociously with the critics and like he has said, the financing for his next film is already in place while he's working on the prior and so he doesn't really have to have standards or it maybe because he can't really keep the pace that he used to when it comes to churning out movies.

I understand that you'd have to be a fool to expect all of them to be great works of art and for all of them to compare with the earlier, more critically acclaimed part of his career but while I, personally, love that I don't have to wait long to see another Woody movie maybe he should slow down, make one movie every other year or something and take his time, primarily, re-writing the script. 

Now this is not because I believe they would then be all classics, he would probably have about the same hit rate as he has now but because I believe that when a potential classic came along, like Midnight in Paris, it would be better, it would be polished, characters rough edges smoothed down a bit, jokes added and it may have had more thought put into it. His films are slowly resembling demo versions of films that could be.

These are all minor niggles though, Midnight in Paris was enjoyable, watchable, looked beautiful, had some very funny scenes and good, strong performances from most of the cast. It beat the fucking bloomers from his last effort 'You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger' or 'You will Wish You Had Never Been Born' as I called it, which was, quite possibly in the running for worst Woody Allen movie of ALL time. I couldn't get through much more than half of it and I sat through all of Cassandra's Dream and, apart from the lead's accents, rather enjoyed it.

To stop and play typical-critic for a moment, out of Woody's recent "European period" I actually rank Midnight in Paris equal with Scoop as my two favourites. This may surprise some but I thought the two which were the best received, Match Point and Vicky Christina Barcelona were absolutely terrible, except for Penelope Cruz's excellent turn in the latter.

In the end, whatever their genre, location or cast, Woody Allen still achieves more in a half-arsed annual film than most film makers achieve their entire career and who am I kidding, I love my yearly Woody movie.

7 out of 10 and there were surprisingly few baguettes

Points from The Wife 8 out of 10.

     

Morning Glory - 20th November 2010

... or The Devil Cares Nada. 
The poster for this movie, see left, states that breakfast TV just got interesting, well that, at least, gets one thing right, Breakfast TV has never been interesting but as for it getting interesting in this movie? that doesn't happen either.
As I have said before, sometimes you have to go watch a film because your wife wants to go see it and this was one of those but, considering I liked the actors involved and I can sit through these sort of 'little person with a big dream' movies pretty easily and let it wash over me, I wasn't dreading it too much.
Written by the same writer behind The Devil Wears Prada, which was 'ok' and 27 Dresses, which was unlikable bilge, this is the same sort of cliche'd, obvious, undemanding, bland, repetitive, you saw it all in the trailer, throwaway tosh you've seen 100 times by someone who once owned 'The Idiot's Guide To Screenwriting' and, sadly, followed it to the letter.
Rachel McAdams, who is in every bloody scene, even when you don't want her to be, is the single, hard working but chirpy young woman who gets laid off from her producing job at a local New Jersey TV station because of those evil corporate suits and in one of many particularly uninspiring and limp montages, manages, finally, to get a meeting with another nonchalant, corporate bigwig played by a surprisingly serious, and therefor nowhere near as good or watchable as he should have been, Jeff Goldblum. On her way out of an interview, she thinks she didn't get because The Goldblum turned out to be a condescending bastard with, unusually for Jeff, no sly grim letting him off the hook, she bumps into both her future squeeze, the underused, under developed and pointlessly tedious Patrick Wilson and future nightmare, Harrison 'did I have a stroke?' Ford, in the elevator. Why yes, of course she does, how fortuitous. 
She goes on to get a job trying to revitalise a fatuous morning show on fictional network IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome?) where the talent hate her, namely Diane Keaton's well played but thinly drawn diva presenter, and the staff don't expect her to last a week. She then goes on to hire Harrison Ford's irascible old "serious news" pro, which he over plays to the point of teeth grinding annoyance, after she fires the first male co-anchor who, out of nowhere, is orange, a huge egotist and an internet pervert.
So far so obvious, of course she's going to tame the old codger, get the ratings up to some magical number before they cancel the show, find the right balance between work and home and learn some ridiculous hogwash about how people are what matter and not the job she's wanted since she was a child and oodles of cash.
Ford's character gripes, grumbles and walks about being a smart arse looking like he constantly needs a poo or a heart attack, Keaton's character bitches or occasionally does embarrassing things like dance with a rapper or wear a sumo suit (get Woody on the phone Diane!!!), McAdams flaps her arms about, talks too fast, changes her hair, cries, takes off her clothes and runs through some pigeons in slow motion, Wilson is the underdeveloped and irrelevant 'bit-of-stuff' and Goldblum talks in such a monotone nasal drawl he may well of actually slept through his entire part waking only momentarily to get paid. The laughable and unbelievable thing is the whole film is stolen, from under the various blocked noses of these hollywood royalty, by a bald weatheman character and the farcical and very funny situations McAdams, as the producer, puts him in. Just as I was thinking 'I am not sure I can handle much more of this', the scenes of him being tortured in ever increasingly hilarious ways for the sake of ratings came on and I actually found myself laughing.
The direction is all Hollywood gloss and that's fine but it's an absolute sin the way it darts around various bits of New York with no effort made to hide the fact that it's both geographically incorrect and they are doing it to show off flashy locations. At least most films have the good decency to try and disguise their tourist book version of the city but in this film, for example, I did find myself asking 'sorry, why is this work meeting with boss Jeff Goldblum taking place on the steps of The Met with an unexplained red head when A) there's no reason for it and B) it's later divulged that he's actually sleeping with the dumb girl who presents useless segments on confused mysticism and uses words she doesn't understand on the show?' or 'why is she, again, discussing ratings with ol' Jeff, surely an office based practice too, comically trying to keep up with his jogging round the reservoir in Central Park?' Absolutely none of it makes any sense at all.


The whole sorry mess is an overly-long, by-the-books shambles with 15 endings you see coming from about 20 minutes in, some homespun, obvious philosophy passed off as wisdom, an entirely irrelevant and completely shortchanged romantic subplot, so many montages featuring wishy washy pop music that are so badly put together, you'd rather saw your own ears off and some thoroughly unrealistic nonsense farce jarring with moments of supposed serious emotional stuff. Also, it has no sophistication about it at all, it tries to, for example, in some of the insulting banter that goes back and forth between Ford and Keaton, attempting, I suppose, to conjure up the rapid fire comical jibes of a 1940s Hollywood comedy but then chooses to end, and believe me I am not spoiling anything at all, with McAdams and Ford walking into a, might as well be, cartoon sunset discussing a prostate check! Oh how hilarious, a prostate check gag! how original! They should have gone the whole hog, had a little circle wipe come down, single them out and have a cartoon pig lean out of the screen and stammer "That's all folks" followed by the Benny Hill music, as Patton Oswald would say "whackety schmackety dooo!"
It just never knows what it wants to be and can't decide when to end, which is funny because I can answer both those things, it wants to be The Devil Wears Prada in a TV Station and it should have ended before it began.
The screenwriter is to blame for all of it because most of the actors try, Goldblum aside, the director tries, throwing filters, camera glare, dutch angles and slow motion at it to try and make it interesting but ultimately with such a trite, obvious plot line, that has absolutely no idea where it's going for the first two thirds of the movie, there's not much you can do but wait for the whole sorry thing to be over.
In certain circumstances (see my Soul Men review) I don't mind a cliche'd Hollywood storyline, in fact most times I expect a certain amount of it but, for this screenwriter at least, all they've done is dusted off a former hit, changed the names and the setting and then presented it again. It's so very annoyingly lazy.


The plus points, and there aren't many, actually come in the form of two secondary characters, one the kindly jewish, second-in-command producer who is genuinely likable and two, the aforementioned, put upon weatherman and also, as always, the city of New York. Even if it is the postcard image of this diverse and varied city, as one astute and, no doubt, bored patron muttered behind me during one of the helicopter shots of Manhattan at dusk, 'wow New York is a beautiful looking city'.
That it is, it's just unfortunate it seems to have lately become the back drop to an endless run of uninspiring rom-coms, so terribly awful, that it gives us all a bad name.
Oh well.
3 out of 10 rotten fruit platters
Points from The Wife 4 out of 10