REVIEW: MIDNIGHT IN PARIS

I just came from seeing MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, Woody Allen’s new film, and it flew up to number 2 on my list of all-time favaorite movies.  It’s a movie that seems like it was made specfically for me.  I was totally enthralled and can’t wait to buy it.  It has shades of Allen’s THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO, and thus requires the willing suspension of disbelief, but it’s worth it.  The movie begins with a rather long montage of scenes of Paris, many of which I have visited, and it took me right back ; it was like going there again.  The cinematography of Paris throughout the movie is exceptional.  The cast is excellent across the board, and since Allen wrote and directed it, it is filled with his dry wit, which I love.  Owen Wilson plays a hack writer visiting Paris with his fiance (Rachel McAdams) and her parents.  He loves walking in Paris at night (who wouldn’t), and one night (and every night thereafter) at midnight he is picked up by a vintage Peugeot and whisked back into the 1920’s (and sometimes the 1890’s) where he parties with all of the famous expatriate writers and artists, including Ernest Hemingway, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein (wonderfully played by Kathy Bates), Lautrec, Rodin, Monet, Matisse, Dali, and on and on.  To be expected, he falls in in love with a gorgeous woman who is Picasso’s mistress.  The story shifts back and forth in time as he tries to work out his relationship with both women, and then deciding in which time period he wants to live.  Allen really makes the most of the Paris setting, and accurately depicts the 20’s.  The costumes are gorgeous, the settings lush and crowded, and the acting superb.  On a scale of ten, it gets a socks up 15.  warning – if you go to see it at the Oriental, I recommend parking in the public lot just south of the theatre.  F inding parking on the streets, most with one hour limit, is horrendous.