Midnight in Paris

Look, I really like Woody Allen's work. The guy can just flat out write, and (with the exception of the awful Celebrity) even his lesser works at least have enough of his unique sensibility and intelligent dialogue to make their viewing worthwhile. That said Midnight in Paris definitely falls into this 'lesser' category. Don't get me wrong-I generally enjoyed it. The film follows a hollywood writer (Owen Wilson) who's in Paris with his fiancee while trying to write a novel. He's obsessed with the Paris of the 1920's and, through some unexplained rift in the space time continuum, every night he's able to transport back to that time and mingle with his literary heroes. Allen uses this setting to make a rather blunt commentary on nostalgia clouding peoples judgement, but in general its just a rather whimsical, well written, travelogue of Paris. The film didn't have quite the impact for me that Allen's best works do, for instance Crimes and Misdemeanors. It may be because I"m not somebody who thinks the past was all that great (mostly because I wasn't living then) but am somebody who arranged to have his mistress murdered by Jerry Orbach. Still its still a thousand times better than anything starring Kevin James.