The New Republic: Books &
Arts
06/02/11
PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT TO READ A NOTE FROM ISAAC CHOTINER, EXECUTIVE EDITOR OF THE BOOK
Audiences and Critics Are Wrong: Woody Allen’s ‘Midnight in Paris’ Isn’t Good. It’s Dismal. David Thomson
Opening in May and reaching out into the
early summer, Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris is an artful and shameless
encouragement of going back to Paris. I suppose that’s better than artless and
shameful, but, from a director who is aged 75 now, wouldn’t it be nice to
feel some age and regret, to say nothing of this being the last time he’ll see
Paris with the euro stronger than a two-day old croissant? The film makes
pleasant, easy-going fun out of the idea of revisiting a starry past—the
1920s!—but, in truth, the movie’s Americans in Paris (at the Bristol) are so
loaded, so smug, and so Woodyish that they’re locked in the emotional clichés of
the 1920s already.
Gil (Owen Wilson) is a successful but soured Hollywood scriptwriter (again, a type from the past) who may want to write a novel—or want to want to write a novel. Desire in these states is so articulated and compromised it has to go around corners slowly. He is with Inez (Rachel McAdams), his spoiled, hard-edged, shopping-mad lover—except that she is his fiancée. I suppose there was a time when rich young Americans took a “fiancée” to Paris—with the fiancée’s stuffy and disapproving parents. All we can see is that Owen and Inez are not suited. They share a room but not each other. After all, she refuses to remark on the kink in his nose—that tact wouldn’t happen in Inez when it confounds the cameraman at every close-up.
Continue reading "Woody Allen’s ‘Midnight in Paris’ Is Dismal."
06/02/11
PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT TO READ A NOTE FROM ISAAC CHOTINER, EXECUTIVE EDITOR OF THE BOOK
Audiences and Critics Are Wrong: Woody Allen’s ‘Midnight in Paris’ Isn’t Good. It’s Dismal. David Thomson
Opening in May and reaching out into the
early summer, Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris is an artful and shameless
encouragement of going back to Paris. I suppose that’s better than artless and
shameful, but, from a director who is aged 75 now, wouldn’t it be nice to
feel some age and regret, to say nothing of this being the last time he’ll see
Paris with the euro stronger than a two-day old croissant? The film makes
pleasant, easy-going fun out of the idea of revisiting a starry past—the
1920s!—but, in truth, the movie’s Americans in Paris (at the Bristol) are so
loaded, so smug, and so Woodyish that they’re locked in the emotional clichés of
the 1920s already.Gil (Owen Wilson) is a successful but soured Hollywood scriptwriter (again, a type from the past) who may want to write a novel—or want to want to write a novel. Desire in these states is so articulated and compromised it has to go around corners slowly. He is with Inez (Rachel McAdams), his spoiled, hard-edged, shopping-mad lover—except that she is his fiancée. I suppose there was a time when rich young Americans took a “fiancée” to Paris—with the fiancée’s stuffy and disapproving parents. All we can see is that Owen and Inez are not suited. They share a room but not each other. After all, she refuses to remark on the kink in his nose—that tact wouldn’t happen in Inez when it confounds the cameraman at every close-up.
Continue reading "Woody Allen’s ‘Midnight in Paris’ Is Dismal."
