- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
88Owen Wilson is a key to the movie's appeal. He makes Gil so sincere, so enthusiastic.
-
75The film is constructed in such a way that suspension of disbelief isn't too hard because there's something universal in what Allen explores. Like Santa Claus, we know it's not real but the idea is so appealing that we go along with the fantasy.
-
75Owen Wilson turns out to be the best Woody Allen surrogate by far.
-
88What's fresh about Midnight in Paris is the way he (Allen) identifies with Gil's idealization of the past, of the Paris that represented art and life at their fullest.
-
100A movie that's loving and wistful and often hysterically funny.
-
75Allen has fun in his imaginary French capital, turning his star-studded cast loose to interpret their characters as they wish.
-
75A sweet-natured trifle, as flavorful and as thin as a crepe.
-
80With Midnight in Paris, Allen has lightened up, allowed himself a treat and in the process created a gift for us and him.
-
90In Woody Allen's beguiling and then bedazzling new comedy, nostalgia isn't at all what it used to be - it's smarter, sweeter, fizzier and ever so much funnier.
-
75The familiar dialogue here makes one long for something closer to the edginess of "Manhattan" or the offbeat humor of "Vicky Cristina Barcelona."
-
80Woody Allen's bad movies often seem to be taking place in some kind of upper-class fantasy world, which may be the reason I find this upfront fantasy to be his funniest, most agreeable comedy in years.
-
75Midnight in Paris initially seems like a departure for Allen, but the prevailing theme blends right in with the rest of his canon.
-
63A hymn to that beautiful city, is among his least consequential efforts. It's attractive and easy to slip into, but he didn't put enough thought into the design, and it soon falls apart.
-
75A sweet, not altogether satisfying variation on the fantasy-becomes-reality conceit he (Allen) used in his Depression-era "The Purple Rose of Cairo."
-
83Allen's filmmaking technique isn't what it once was, true. But at age 75 he still manages to keep a spry pace going even if something less than impeccable craft hobbles the photography and editing.
-
90It is marvelously romantic, even though - or precisely because - it acknowledges the disappointment that shadows every genuine expression of romanticism.
-
75Certainly, his (Allen) work here feels effortless, and that feather-light touch gives the picture its charm – modest but real.
-
90Darius Khondji's cinematography evokes to the hilt the gorgeously inviting Paris of so many people's imaginations (while conveniently ignoring the rest), and the film has the concision and snappy pace of Allen's best work.
-
88Led by Wilson and Cotillard, the ensemble makes the most of the material that works, and makes the best of the rest of it.
-
88Midnight in Paris is not a perfect movie - as in "Julie & Julia" one senses its creator's impatience to leave the bleached-out present for the colorful past. But it is warm and effortless, qualities that make it embraceable.
-
80Allen seems to be paying attention in a way he hasn't always done in recent films, and has found a way to channel his often-caustic misanthropy, half-comic fear of death and anti-American bitterness into agreeable comic whimsy.
-
75Sheer pleasure to watch, full of rich visuals and felicitous comic turns.
-
80As in "Purple Rose," the film works best when tweaking the disparate worlds thrown together, though "Midnight" is frothier, and so Wilson shines.
-
67An unassuming wisp of a movie, Midnight In Paris finds Woody Allen penning a love letter to the City Of Lights, albeit one whose sentiments could easily fit on a postcard.
-
90This supernatural comedy isn't just Allen's best film in more than a decade; it's the only one that manages to rise above its tidy parable structure and be easy, graceful, and glancingly funny, as if buoyed by its befuddled hero's enchantment.
-
78Quite simply, Midnight in Paris is charming – très charmant, to ape the argot of the locals. I say that somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as this is very much an outsider's valentine to the City of Lights.
-
75A fanciful French cousin to Allen's "Zelig" and "The Purple Rose of Cairo," yet the fulfilled wish for a better life is high-concept absurdity without high-anxiety guffaws.
-
70Midnight has one big problem: Allen hardly gives Gil a perceptive moment. He's awestruck and fumbling - he doesn't possess, to our eyes, the conviction of a writer. But who knows? He's young.
-
88A lovely jaunt that ends up becoming one of Allen's most enjoyable films, start-to-finish, in years.
-
80This is prime Woody Allen - insightful, philosophical and very funny.
-
75Souffle-light and long on charm.
-
100Allen eventually gets to the heart of this matter: the allure and danger of nostalgia.
-
100In a film so ripe with temptations for posturing, exaggeration and satirical overacting, nobody is anything less than natural, unpretentious and funny as hell.
-
90The best Allen movie in 10 years, or maybe even close to 20 - is all about that idea: Reckoning with the past as a real place, but also worrying about the limits of nostalgia.
-
70A trifle in both senses of the word: a feather-light, disposable thing, and a rich dessert appealingly layered with cake, jam, and cream.
-
90Woody Allen's time-travelling comedy Midnight In Paris is a valentine to Paris and an absolute delight.
-
75But lo! Isn't that Owen Wilson, blond and goyische to the gills, yet faithfully replicating the put-upon slump of the Allen shoulders, the quavering stammers about art vs. success, literature vs. Hollywood?
-
80A delicious trifle for anyone who has ever dreamt of bantering about the cinema with Luis Buñuel or lounging at the piano to hear Cole Porter sing "Let's Do It."
-
May 17, 201180The latest in a long line of actors playing a "Woody Allen type" in a Woody Allen film, Wilson bends his own recognizably nasal Texan drawl into an exaggerated pattern of staccatos and glissandos that's obviously modeled on the writer/director's near-musical verbal cadences.
-
May 12, 201180Like a swoony lost chapter from "Paris, je t'aime" agreeably extended to feature length.