8.23.2012
Midnight in Paris
Official Website | IMDb
Overall Grade: B+
Plot: Gil, successful screenwriter, budding author, is visiting Paris with his fiancee Inez and her parents when they run into a couple that is friends with Inez. Gil (Owen Wilson) proceeds to chafe under the worldly, smug, know-it-all attitude of the other man whom Inez is fawning over. He gets completely tipsy at a wine-tasting and insists on walking back to the hotel in order to in take in the ambiance. As the bell tolls midnight, he is cajoled into an antique taxi which whisks him away to the Paris of the 1920's, thick with American authors and famous artists of all nationalities, from whom he proceeds to learn a lot about having confidence in his writing and living his life.
Review: I probably would have liked this film more if I knew all the authors and artists it references. Anyway, I will shamelessly admit that I watched this for Tom Hiddleston's portrayal of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Though he only has a few scenes, Tom looks dapper as always in period clothing and his American accent is superb. I listened the whole time for his original accent to break in somewhere but nope! Well done, Tom!
Anyways, despite my initial motivations, it was an enjoyable film. And you really start to like Gil especially when Inez starts yelling that he's going crazy because he thinks he's traveling back in time.
Other things of note, the nameless tour guide is played by Carla Bruni, whom you might know as the wife of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy. And Inez's father is played by Kurt Fuller, aka the angel Zachariah on 'Supernatural', so that lent an unintentional creep factor to my viewing - as it now will for other 'Supernatural' watchers.
Labels: genre: historical, media: movie
