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Arts & Entertainment

Woody Allen Back in Top Comedic Form

'Midnight in Paris' is a flat-out, refreshing winner from legendary director.

As The Hangover Part II reigned on the box office charts, raking in an estimated $118 million over Memorial Day weekend, an exponentially smaller comedy managed to crack the top 10.

It did so despite playing on only 58 screens compared with Hangover’s 3,615, according to Box Office Mojo.

This week’s underdog champ is Midnight in Paris, a warmhearted crowd-pleaser from the legendary Woody Allen. It marks the first time I’ve ever had to stand in line to see a new work from the staggeringly prolific filmmaker. My devotion to his films has been unflagging through all the ups and downs of his professional and personal life. Even his most flawed pictures have more flashes of brilliance than the vast majority of American cinema. 

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Yet in the last 10 years, Allen hasn’t made a single film that warrants comparison to his neurotic comedies of past decades. His best recent work has been in the form of melancholy character portraits (Sweet and Lowdown), brooding thrillers (Match Point) and sexy melodramas (Vicky Cristina Barcelona).

Yet anytime he attempts to spin an old-fashioned yarn about a kvetching Manhattan intellectual (as in 2009’s Whatever Works), the results are routinely disastrous. Allen’s deep-seated pessimism suddenly appeared to be taking a toll on his creativity, rather than enhancing it.

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It’s for these reasons that Midnight in Paris is such a splendid surprise. The sold-out screening I attended on opening night  was at AMC River East 21 in Chicago. The theater was obviously packed with hardcore fans of the director’s work, but I was struck by the vast range of ages. By the final fade-out, the viewers were united in their enthusiastic delight. 

Paris is Allen’s most purely enjoyable, resoundingly hopeful film since 1996’s Everyone Says I Love You. It harkens back to lighter, more playful fare not seen from the filmmaker since the mid-80s, characterized by a tireless invention and poignant whimsy. The closest relatives to this breezy lark would be my favorite Allen short story, 1977’s The Kuglemass Episode, and my personal favorite Allen picture, 1985’s The Purple Rose of Cairo.

Yet despite its similarities, the film also represents a refreshing change of pace for Allen, whose leading men have a history of mimicking his familiar mannerisms. Owen Wilson is about as far removed from Allen as one could get, with his southern twang and cheerfully casual demeanor. It was Allen’s longtime casting director Juliet Taylor who determined that Wilson would be perfect for the protagonist in Paris, and the choice could not have been more impeccable. Wilson’s gentle deadpan humor and cozy lovability bring a new life and energy to Allen’s zingers. Sometimes it’s merely the dry slant that Wilson puts on his delivery of a word that ends up earning it a laugh. 

The film’s opening moments are entirely wordless, with Allen offering a montage of Parisian locales as lovingly lensed as the New York streets in Manhattan. So much of the architecture carries an aura of the past. Just think of the generations of people that have feasted their eyes on the Eiffel Tower.

It’s nostalgic thoughts such as this that fill the mind of Gil (Wilson), a self-loathing writer who dreams of moving to Paris and finding artistic inspiration. His loathsome fiancé (Rachel McAdams) ridicules his dreams, while fawning over a scholarly blowhard (Michael Sheen, alumnus from the same School of Smugness as Alan Alda in Crimes and Misdemeanors), who loves nothing more than the sound of his own voice, even as it gets the facts wrong. 

Since the film’s marketing campaign has done a spectacular job of concealing the film’s gags and twists, I’ll refrain from being one of the kill-joy critics that gives away all the surprises. What I will reveal is that the film includes a host of increasingly funny and surprising cameos from a plethora of vibrant talent, including Marion Cotillard, Léa Seydoux, Corey Stoll, Kathy Bates, Alison Pill and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the wife of France's president.

Wilson’s Darjeeling Limited co-star Adrien Brody is especially funny in a sequence resembling a first-rate Saturday Night Live sketch, where he gets a remarkable amount of comic mileage out of the word “rhinoceros.” 

Like Allen’s previous effort, the diverting yet sloppy You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Paris has an overarching message along the lines of “the grass is always greener on the other side.” Yet while Stranger lingers on life’s inherent disappointments, Paris is about overcoming them.

Perhaps Allen’s newfound philosophy is reflected in a line uttered by Bates, who declares, “An artist’s job is to provide an antidote for the meaninglessness of existence.” Though Paris is far from a major work in the career of its brilliant writer and director, it is an utterly endearing treat, a triumphant return to form, and an uplifting ode to life from one of the nation’s most reluctant nihilists.

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