Midnight in Paris
What a crappy movie! What a colossal self-indulging wank! Wanked right into my eyes!
So here's a guy, a presumably successful screenwriter, trying to establish himself as a serious novelist and not quite getting the hang of it. But is that driving the plot? No. Does that develop gradually toward a meaningful resolution and conclusion? No. At one isolated point that has no dramatic progression toward it, that has no catalyst, and which doesn't offer or make way toward a grander or final conclusion, he just gets some vague pointers that give us no actual insight into what he lacked as a writer, or what he supposedly gained. What are the pointers? They're that his writing is too lacking in hope. But since his novel's protagonist runs a nostalgia store, we don't know if it's hopeless because he's looking to escape reality, or hopeless because he succumbs to it, or maybe hopeless in some other way. It's just cheap, meaningless dribble.
So what else is going on with him? He's a romantic, he's got a yearning for the olden days. Though his antagonist view it as escapism and weakness. He travels to the olden days, they turn out to be great. Party party, everyone's famous, everyone's a character, everyone's enjoying themselves. Looks like the olden days really are awesome! Except, no they're not, because after spending the majority of the film enjoying himself and romping around the olden days, he realizes that his dependance on nostalgia and romanticizing the past is a flaw and an escape from reality. Really? That conclusion certainly didn't deserve a feature length movie, not only because it's a fucking pitiful conclusion, but because none of the movie actually focused on, or slowly developed toward pointing out or supporting that conclusion, on the contrary!
There's also a love story. He's got a bitchy, shallow fiance who's just jammed in there for the sole purposes of him triumphing over her at one point. A most horrid, one-dimensional character if there ever was one, giving us no glimpse at how they could have possibly ever ended up together, making their relationship a contrived mess. So he travels to the olden days, meets a nice girl, they get along and fall in love, and then this one semblance of an actual cohesive and recognizable storyline reaches a dead end when he decides that she's misguided, unable to cope with the here and now, just like him, and then just fucking leaves her, with no second thought, shitting all over the moments they spent together. So that love story was not the point!
So what was the point? What concrete conclusions are we left with? He's unable to cope with reality, with the present, and looking for escape is a flaw and a folly. But does he change accordingly? No. He decides to leave his fiance and move to Paris, the city he loves because it reminds him of the olden days, and then hits it up with a pretty young thing who he connects with over their common love of nostalgia and sense of romance, like, moments after he left someone over her love of nostalgia and sense of romance. What a fucking putrid mess!
And that's the end! His actions are pointless, and he proves his antagonists right! Now if this was a Lars Von Trier movie, or a Bergman movie, i'd get it. It would be a film about how humans are aimlessly wandering vacuous nothings with no semblance of meaning, worth or direction to their thoughts or lives. But it's not, it's a Woody Allen movie. So what it is really, is a self-indulging wank, peddling cheap, chewed up wisdom in attempt to portray itself as more. It's Woody Allen fantasizing about meeting and being friends with all his idols of the olden times and having fun with them, it's about nostalgia and melancholy of Allen and him indulging in it, which is just another way it makes a total ridiculous mockery of the only clear conclusion the protagonist traveled toward and reached, which was that he's foolish for behaving as such.
The worst thing is, Woody Allen had a great opportunity to give life to some of the artistic greats of the past, but all of their characters were based on some simple and well known fact or trait they possessed, such a narrow focus giving them the depth of caricatures, not people.
So here's a guy, a presumably successful screenwriter, trying to establish himself as a serious novelist and not quite getting the hang of it. But is that driving the plot? No. Does that develop gradually toward a meaningful resolution and conclusion? No. At one isolated point that has no dramatic progression toward it, that has no catalyst, and which doesn't offer or make way toward a grander or final conclusion, he just gets some vague pointers that give us no actual insight into what he lacked as a writer, or what he supposedly gained. What are the pointers? They're that his writing is too lacking in hope. But since his novel's protagonist runs a nostalgia store, we don't know if it's hopeless because he's looking to escape reality, or hopeless because he succumbs to it, or maybe hopeless in some other way. It's just cheap, meaningless dribble.
So what else is going on with him? He's a romantic, he's got a yearning for the olden days. Though his antagonist view it as escapism and weakness. He travels to the olden days, they turn out to be great. Party party, everyone's famous, everyone's a character, everyone's enjoying themselves. Looks like the olden days really are awesome! Except, no they're not, because after spending the majority of the film enjoying himself and romping around the olden days, he realizes that his dependance on nostalgia and romanticizing the past is a flaw and an escape from reality. Really? That conclusion certainly didn't deserve a feature length movie, not only because it's a fucking pitiful conclusion, but because none of the movie actually focused on, or slowly developed toward pointing out or supporting that conclusion, on the contrary!
There's also a love story. He's got a bitchy, shallow fiance who's just jammed in there for the sole purposes of him triumphing over her at one point. A most horrid, one-dimensional character if there ever was one, giving us no glimpse at how they could have possibly ever ended up together, making their relationship a contrived mess. So he travels to the olden days, meets a nice girl, they get along and fall in love, and then this one semblance of an actual cohesive and recognizable storyline reaches a dead end when he decides that she's misguided, unable to cope with the here and now, just like him, and then just fucking leaves her, with no second thought, shitting all over the moments they spent together. So that love story was not the point!
So what was the point? What concrete conclusions are we left with? He's unable to cope with reality, with the present, and looking for escape is a flaw and a folly. But does he change accordingly? No. He decides to leave his fiance and move to Paris, the city he loves because it reminds him of the olden days, and then hits it up with a pretty young thing who he connects with over their common love of nostalgia and sense of romance, like, moments after he left someone over her love of nostalgia and sense of romance. What a fucking putrid mess!
And that's the end! His actions are pointless, and he proves his antagonists right! Now if this was a Lars Von Trier movie, or a Bergman movie, i'd get it. It would be a film about how humans are aimlessly wandering vacuous nothings with no semblance of meaning, worth or direction to their thoughts or lives. But it's not, it's a Woody Allen movie. So what it is really, is a self-indulging wank, peddling cheap, chewed up wisdom in attempt to portray itself as more. It's Woody Allen fantasizing about meeting and being friends with all his idols of the olden times and having fun with them, it's about nostalgia and melancholy of Allen and him indulging in it, which is just another way it makes a total ridiculous mockery of the only clear conclusion the protagonist traveled toward and reached, which was that he's foolish for behaving as such.
The worst thing is, Woody Allen had a great opportunity to give life to some of the artistic greats of the past, but all of their characters were based on some simple and well known fact or trait they possessed, such a narrow focus giving them the depth of caricatures, not people.