I was quite eager to read your comments on this film, because the lack of acceptance of this one (amongst Woody-philes) is a bit of a mystery to me - I really like it, and have since first viewing. I can't easily dismiss the criticisms I've quoted above - I can only say most of them don't really bother me in the slightest. I don't love the narrator in this (or VCB), but he doesn't annoy me, either. Ditto the letting the characters say their feelings bit (which Woody role has him saying "I'm shocked - I'm stunned..." or something like that? I can visualize it but can't place the film). This just doesn't seem that different from other Woody films to me in that regard. Freida doesn't have much of a role here, but I think she's supposed to be a fairly peripheral character (more "window dressing" than actual character), so I can let that one go, too. As to the mixup on the death - point to you. My hazy memory of this film was that he didn't make that such an awkward bit of dialogue in the script - but he did. It is a weak link but, again, I like the twist so much that I don't really care if it's executed poorly. So, with that said, I'll just say what I LIKE about this film. Unlike you, I don't find it at all dull. I find the central characters and their dilemmas all quite believable/relatable. The older woman getting ditched: I think she's somewhat charming and befuddled. Her penchant to nip a drink in every scene is done more believably than, say, the actor in Bullets who overeats (yes, I know that's done for comic effect, but I don't find it all that funny, and I prefer the subtler, believable, comic version presented here). Her steadfast belief in the charlatan psychic is also very amusing to me. Her ex, foolishly thinking his second youth awaits him, is entertainingly depicted, as first he encounters loneliness, then awkwardly mingles with the younger set, and then gets so obviously bilked by a different kind of shyster (that he's completely blind to). I find her an amusingly drawn character as well, with her extravagantly awful tastes. Meanwhile the son-in-law, who can't find his niche in life, is a great character - a soulless loser who can't even make it as a driver! He has delusions of talent but ... no actual talent. He's SOOOO stupid that he wants to turn his back on the lovely Naomi Watts! And steal a dead friend's work! Love him!* Poor Naomi, meanwhile, stuck with this clown, but infatuated with her boss, who's not even interested in her. I can identify, to some degree, with all those characters' issues, unlike the completely unbelievable Boris, or the Anything Else or Melinda characters. I identify with them more than I do with Vicki, or Cristina, for that matter. They seem like real 21st century people to me (which we've noted Woody has trouble with), all making really bad choices in life. One of them even uses the term "24/7"! And, as you pointed out in the above clip from Cannes, who winds up happily ever after? Only the ones who are least grounded in reality - those who believe in past lives and related hokum. I certainly wouldn't put this in my top ten Woody films, but it would probably make the top 20. Watching it the other night, my only real complaint is that there is a shift in TONE in the film. At the beginning, I truly do find most of these characters comical, to one degree or another (Woody's typical upbeat jazz score sort of drives that "light" touch). Towards the end of the film, the comic element that I perceived has sort of vanished, as virtually all the characters have rude awakenings to their fates. That's the one thing I think he missed here. But I'd rather watch this flick than most of his 21st century works - so there! *The scene when he's just found out his novel won't be published, and he goes to see Freida, only to see her leave her apartment with a younger, more attractive guy, is perhaps my favorite scene in the film. He's walking down the street, buttoning his shirt, and he can't even do THAT right, as he misaligns the buttons (and never realizes it) - that's hilarious, in my twisted world.
It's good to have another film that we disagree on, it keeps things interesting and makes good reading for our thousands of lurkers (since we're the only 2 people on the planet who've seen the film more than once ) Placing the "I'm shocked" is bothering me (thanks!) ... he says it very slowly ... "I'm shooooocked" ... can't place it! I really don't see what there IS of interest in the Josh Brolin character, and I don't have a clue what the incredibly beautiful neighbor sees in him (their relationship in the film has zero depth - what makes him more desirable than the other man who we know nothing about?) I'd take Boris any day of the week (just not Jason Biggs, please please please). I guess I can relate to Boris but not to Roy. I will say I LOVE the premise at the heart of the film - that "blue pill" people will almost invariably be happier than "red pill" people and their reality. Unfortunately, it's funnier to hear Woody talk about in a press conference than to see it put into action (speaking strictly for myself, of course), at least this time out. I absolutely agree with your point about the film growing darker as it goes on, and losing its lighter touch. The last scene between Anthony Hopkins and Lucy Punch, in fact, is pretty dark, and we know Roy's got Hell to pay. I guess that Jonathan (Roger Ashton-Griffiths) is an effective character, because despite looking like Droopy Dog and surely not wanting to hurt a fly, I feel a compulsion to smack him ... or maybe just knock him on the head, once for yes, twice for no. After the turn-of-the-century trilogy of badness (Curse-Hollywood-Anything), this is my least favorite of the 21st century films.
The Wikipedia entry for the term certainly conjures up a Woody Allen film. In part: In the United States, café society came to the fore with the end of Prohibition in December 1933 and the rise of photo journalism, to describe the set of people who tended to do their entertaining semi-publicly, in restaurants and night clubs and who would include among them movie stars and sports celebrities. Some of the American night clubs and New York City restaurants frequented by the denizens of café society included El Morocco, the Stork Club, and the 21 Club.
I've been away for a few days and missed discussing the only late-period Woody movie I've seen - "Whatever Works". I have mixed feelings about the movie. Larry David is good at doing the only thing he does (much like Woody, his acting range is very thin, but effective) - being a curmudgeon of the nth degree. When Larry rants, it's hilarious. But that's about the only thing I like about the movie. The rest of it is totally unbelievable (this young waif actually MARRIES the guy?) but at least I can see where the concept of the movie is coming from. Woody seems to be saying that no matter how weird a relationship seems to people outside of it, it's the actual couple that matters, so let them be and MYOB.
This is another case of no matter how much he said the script was from the 70s or it's just fiction me made up to be funny, he had to know that critics and audience alike would assume he was making an autobiographical statement in regards to May-December romances, especially those that come about under the oddest of circumstances. He and his wife seem to have been filching happiness for about 25 years now.
2012 - "Midnight in Paris" Best Woody trailer ever (IMO) because it keeps the plot so close to the vest.
We've already discussed this 2012 release back during "Play It Again, Sam" since it is inspired by that film, but just for completeness sake: Definitely worth a view for the hardcore Allen fan.
I don't even remember YWMATDS. Possible I missed this one as I was going through a tumultuous and costly divorce at this time. The above comments don't have me itching to check it out. Midnight in Paris was entertaining but was IMO vastly overrated due to shameless pandering to the literary fascination of his audience and critics. Characters need to be fascinating based on the four corners of the script, not simply due to sharing names and resembling identities of well known and respected people. And to be clear, calling a Woody Allen film entertaining is damning by faint praise. I find rhe Supergirl TV series to be entertaining.
I remember thinking Midnight in Paris was just alright. The only thing that really sticks in my memory is that the movie was mostly pleasant enough (ah, the faint praise), but why didn't they get better actors to play some of the artists he encounters? Which kind of made me feel like WA didn't really care anymore, which in turn made me think of Jade Scorpion, which made me want to write him off completely, which I almost did at this point... Glad I didn't, though. There was one subsequent WA movie that I loved...
Like it. Love it, in fact; it is a little slight but it's fun to see Woody return to Paris and reference people and scenes those familiar with his career (in stand-up, writing and film) will know, even though he's not in the film. I look at the poster and wonder why Owen Wilson's head is on the body. Okay, I know it's because it's 30 years or so too late for Woody to play the part, but... Thought the opening montage went on way too long, though... Friend of mine said she was amazed how he'd managed to make a city as dirty as Paris beautiful again, but, you know, you go there and it's still magical, unless you take a wrong turn and get mugged.
To your point about the endless name dropping, there's a line in "To Rome With Love" that it is a (I assume unintended and completely coincidental) comment on that very phenomenon: "She knows one line from every poet. Just enough to fake it."
My two cents on "Midnight in Paris": I thought this was a fairly pedestrian effort when I first saw it in the theater. I feel like my repeat viewings have been tainted to some degree by the film's enormous success (perhaps echoing Woody's sentiment that Mr. J. quoted somewhere far back in this thread - that if a film is widely popular Woody feels that that's an indicator that he must have done something wrong). I guess it rankles me that this is Woody's highest grossing film ever, when it's not particularly insightful and is mildly funny, but not a laugh riot. But I should get over that and accept the film on it's own terms. I don't think that Woody had any great notion that this film would be a runaway hit, or even sell more tickets than "Tall Dark Stranger", nor did he have a grand scheme to suddenly achieve wide commercial success. I think one of the keys to the film's success is the lead character (Gil Pender) and Owen Wilson's performance. While many critics played "spot the Woody character" and jumped on Gil, I think that's a mistake. Gil Pender is much more Tom Baxter (the character who comes off the screen in "Purple Rose of Cairo") than any character Woody ever played. Gil is idealistic, romantic, sentimental, and is hardly cynical in the slightest. There might be a stammer or two, but there's no biting wit, no put downs of anyone, really, apart from his critiques of his own writing (and his political allegiances, which seem to be here for comic effect more than character development). He's simply not a "Woody character". And I think that that likability is part of what won mainstream audiences over. I like the "Manhattan"-esque opening of the film (Woody idolizing Paris all out of proportion), and the unique (in the Woody canon) idea of having narration over the credits. There are plenty of funny moments before the time travel begins - including the blank stares Gil gets after saying "Am I right?" regarding his leftist politics, and Paul's explanation of the term Versailles - "terrain where the weeds have been pulled". As much of a tool as he is, Paul does offer a moment of insight - "Nostalgia is denial of the painful present" (could be the motto of sh.tv!) When the time travel kicks in, which should be "the good part", the movie starts to lose me a bit. Woody makes a very cut and dried decision to not consider the logistics of the time travel in the slightest, or have Gil give any thought to can he get back to 2012 (and how?), can he get back to 1920s again, etc. And while there is a passing joke about Gil buying some Matisses in the 1920s, the subject of "The Tannen Temptation" (named, by me, for Biff in "Back to the Future", who made his millions with a sports almanac from the future) is never really addressed. A moviegoer with less of an "A" personality would probably let all these things slide and enjoy the movie, but for me they impact the realism of the situation (yes, I like characters to respond realistically, even when confronted with time travel, magic and aliens). My second gripe with the time travel sequences is, as RFreeman mentioned, the relentless name dropping. None of the famous characters are actually developed as characters (perhaps Hemingway a wee bit) - they're mostly cardboard, and they spend most of their time just namedropping other famous characters. Not that there aren't good moments - Hemingway's "Who wants to fight?!", and Gil's joke to TS Eliot - "Where I come from people measure out their lives in coke spoons" (all the English teachers in the audience were laughing, I assure you!) I guess I wanted to see more of Hemingway (since he is in many ways the antithesis of "the Woody character"), more of the Fitzgeralds (Zelda has the makings of a good kamikaze woman) and much, much, much less of Kathy Bates playing Kathy Bates and calling herself Gertrude Stein. A few stray thoughts - the missing detective gag near the end is funny, and the hotel doctor doesn't have the slightest clue how to take BP (sloppy film making!) I'll still take "Whatever Works" over this film because it just speaks to me a great deal more (and I think its funnier), but I will acknowledge that this is a good film, despite it's popularity.
Well, @RayS, I hope the narrator in Café Society doesn't bother you! Very minor plot spoilers here: New Plot Details For Woody Allen’s ‘Cafe Society’ Starring Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg »
Right from "this is my old neighborhood" Woody the narrator had me in "Radio Days". He said at the "Tall Dark Stranger" press conference that he didn't use himself as narrator because that "changes the picture when it's me". I guess something about the plot to "Cafe Society" made him think that it would change it for the better this time.
I fear I will have to give Cafe Society a miss since I am allergic to Jesse Eisenberg. (I have medical documentation to back this up, if required.)
I thought Jesse was quite passable in "To Rome With Love", and I felt that he was perfect for the role in "The Social Network". And I really liked him in "The Double", but who can resist any movie based on a Dostoyevsky story? If Jesse and Jason Biggs were having a fight in the alley behind the bar, I would be rooting for Jesse the entire time.
There's this one moment in 20s Paris where Gil is closely echoing some dialog from Tom Baxter in "Purple Rose" (the film within the film part). Gil says something like "I can't believe I'm hear and I've met all these people" etc. I think we see Tom say it two or three times in New York before he finally leaves the screen. Two of the best "good guys" in a Woody movie in terms of their purity of heart.
Midnight in Paris is a very lighthearted riff on Woody's old theme of Life vs Art. Successful movie writer Owen Wilson dreams of writing a serious novel and thereby rising above the Philistinism, pedantry, commercialism and Republicanism that surround him in real life. It's a pretty fluffy take on the subject, so maybe I'm wrong to be exercised about it. But here's what exercises me. We know from all Woody's interviews that he detests the idea of art as disguised biography. And yet Midnight in Paris is a film structured entirely round that idea - a film in which the quirks and love affairs of the artists are all we can possibly know or want to know about them. Right from the opening, every discussion of the art works mentioned in the film is couched exclusively in terms of biographical snippets about the artists who produced them. We hear what James Joyce ate (or didn't eat) for lunch; where Monet lived; the statue that Rodin chose for his tomb; the names of Rodin's wife and mistress; the name of Cole Porter's wife; the names of absolutely everybody's lovers. This is how the odious Michael Sheen character thinks of art. But the Owen Wilson character does exactly the same throughout the film. It's how Gertrude Stein critiques Picasso's painting. It's how Hemingway explains Zelda's artistic rivalry with Scott. In the circumstances it's no surprise to discover that Owen Wilson's novel, like the works of Harry Block, turns out to feature characters based on his wife, her pedantic lover and Owen Wilson himself. Is Woody teasing those critics who see his own work as nothing more than a fictionalised commentary on his marriages and personal tribulations? Or is Woody not really sure exactly what he is doing? And then there's the question of escapism. Owen Wilson's ideas of Paris and of writing merge in a kind of wet dream of extended adolescent clichés: "I can see myself just strolling along the Left Bank with a, you know, baguette under my arm, headed to the Café de Flore to scribble away on my book". Elsewhere he says that his novel is set in a "nostalgia shop", and will appeal to "people who live in the past, people who think that their lives would be happier if they lived in an earlier time". Or, as his fiancée puts it: "Gil is a complete romantic. I mean, he would be more than happy living in a complete state of perpetual denial . . . And the name for this fallacy is called "golden-age thinking" . . . the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one one's living in." Woody really seems to be going out of his way to tell us that this writing lark isn't anything to be taken seriously. Maybe it's not even "art". Maybe what we're talking about here is better described as "actual literature", as when Owen Wilson declares: "I'm having trouble because I'm a Hollywood hack who never gave actual literature a real shot." Yes, I know, it's a comedy. It has some very funny lines (as well as some awful ones: "Prufrock's like my mantra!") and Owen Wilson, Tom Hiddleston etc are very good indeed. But why is Woody so anxious to discourage us from taking his intentions seriously? Any question touching on his art seems to make him pathologically evasive. So he gives a wry grin and offers us James Joyce's sauerkraut and Dali's rhinoceros instead. He denies the autobiographical basis of art and then makes a film which treats art as nothing but intimate titbits and escapist fantasies. Do his jokes capture a truth or persistently undercut it? What a puzzling old man he is!
