Midnight in Paris

My stream of consciousness review (with spell check) of Midnight in Paris:

Midnight in Manhattan, er, rather, Midnight in Paris:

“Chapter One. He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion. Eh uh, no, make that he, he romanticized it all out of proportion.”

Chapter Two. He adored Paris...

Midnight in Paris isn't a “sequel” to Manhattan. More like a prequel. The story of a young, romantic writer who is fighting desperately not to sell out; a young writer who is about to marry a beautiful woman, who's smart, ambitious, opinionated, adoring...

But, forces are conspiring to bitterly blight his nostalgic, sentimental view of the writer's life, true love, and The City of Light.

From the opening shots (a breath-taking 2-3 minute tour of Paris from morning to night); a bright, gloriously color photographed cityscape; hardcore Woody Allen fans (they exist!) are transported back to Manhattan, 1979, to a long ago black and white tour of New York City; Gershwin music, whip-smart dialogue, unabashed liberal politics; an appreciation of the finer things in life; like “Sentimental Education by Flaubert... um... those incredible Apples and Pears by Cezanne... uh... the crabs at Sam Wo's... Tracy's face...”

While, our current hero, Gil (Owen Wilson) dreams of a Paris where Hemingway and Gertrude Stein rub elbows with Picasso and Dali; where art and artists are revered and beloved; love and beauty abound; Issac Davis (Woody Allen) teetered between hopeless romantic and hypocritical cynic (its a thin line), Gil is still firmly in the grasp of romance. And the audience is all the better for it. Because, while the best Woody Allen films fall into the cynical/realist category (Crimes and Misdemeanors, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Husbands and Wives), when Mr. Allen scores with a sentimental romance, he scores big (he literally invented the modern romantic comedy, for good or ill, with Annie Hall).

Midnight in Paris is so gorgeous to look at, and Owen Wilson is so easy to love, it makes Mr. Allen's keen-as-ever one-liners melt on contact; not to mention his most moving character insight since the wonderful Duck Soup-life-is-worth-living revelation in Hannah and Her Sisters. Of course, for fans, to watch one Woody Allen film is to concurrently watch them all; and to see Gil come to grips with lost love in a bygone era is to once again hear Tracy's advice to a demoralized Issac in Manhattan:

“Not everybody gets corrupted. You have to have a little faith in people.”

Postscript:
Woody Allen's film and public persona had for years been synonymous with New York; jokes abounded about his desire to never leave the island of Manhattan; and its a testament to the power of change, personally and creatively, that Mr. Allen's best films in recent years have been set abroad: Match Point (2005), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), and now Midnight in Paris (2011).  Maybe he should consider the possibility of further expansion: Woody Allen goes to Japan; Woody Allen in the Middle East; Woody Allen in Russia (not counting his first trip to Russia, in his comic masterpiece, Love and Death).