The first minute, and you know it's Woody Allen thanks to its credits - same format, same fonts. The second minute and you know where it is: Paris. The fifth minute and you think "Alright I got it, I know it's Paris, I know what the Eiffel Tower/ the Champs Elysees/ the Place Vendome/ Odeon/ the Seine/ look like, you don't need to show them to me three or four times, get to your story Woody". Unfortunately, you end up wishing he didn't get to try to make his point, because the emptiness, the poverty and the stupidity of this film are really outrageous.
I can try and make a simplistic summary - it would be simplistic no matter what -: Gil and Inez (Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams) are spending a few days in Paris. They're engaged, but the purpose of this trip has nothing to do with it - Inez's parents are also in Paris, and the couple chose - you have no idea why, which lovers would go to Paris with parents around? - this opportunity to visit the city too. Gil is a very demanded screenwriter in Hollywood, but what he really wants is to become a novel writer. Inez, the typical LA blonde with expensive clothes/ shoes/ bags/ tastes, doesn't understand why her fiance would want to experience something different and make no money out of it - you see, the plan for them is to buy a house in Malibu. However, Gil isn't the defeatist type, and he sticks to his dream. While they're having dinner in a restaurant, Inez meets with friends from the States - the most pendantic man in the world and his transparent girlfriend - and decides to spend days and nights with them. Of course, it is not of Gil's taste, so when they all decide to go dancing, the "writer wannabe" choses to wander around Paris to find ideas - you understand, he really likes Paris at night, under the rain, and wishes he could have lived there in the 1920s, how original, right? -. But at midnight, while seating in front of the Pantheon, a car stops in front of him and makes him travel in time: Gil is now in the 1920s ! And guess what? Over the night, he meets with Cole Porter, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway ! I won't ruin the rest of the film by telling you who else he meets - that is actually the one and only funny part of the movie, trying to guess who's coming next.
In the morning, Gil is back into his time - with his awful fiance who keeps saying how amazing, funny, clever and handsome her unbearable male friend is, with his terrible parents - in - law who keep on saying "cheap is cheap" and who vote republican, with his miserable existence - but don't worry, he does meet gorgeous women too in the years 2010, including Carla Bruni and Léa Seydoux.
And then what? Then nothing. Absolutely NOTHING. No humor, no script, no story, no characters, no movie. A simple succession of Paris shots and of "Guess who is coming next on the screen". I had already been pretty disappointed by Allen's last film, but this is above everything. I couldn't expect anything that bad from the king of the comedy genre. Maybe too much is too much, and Allen might want to consider taking more time between his films to actually think about them a bit more?
I cannot say that it is the fact that Paris was shown as a postcard that upset me - I've been away from the city of my heart since almost 9 months, so any shot of it makes me happy and stupid and smile - but the fact that the film has no purpose nor intelligence at all - Gil the romantic writer, engaged with Inez, the upstart annoying and spoiled blonde who dreams of a house in Malibu... Seriously? How much more incoherent could this be? C'mon Woody, you can do better than THAT.
MJ.
