Review of "Midnight in Paris"

Every few years Woody Allen makes a great movie, and people talk about how Woody's back.

Well, since he does this regularly, he's never really away. With "Match Point" (2005), "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" (2008) and now "Midnight in Paris," it's pretty clear that New York City's favorite neurotic nerd is still one of America's greatest and most prolific filmmakers.

"Midnight in Paris" opens as a loving postcard to all things Eiffel and then turns into a fairy tale balancing the timelessness of dissatisfaction with the beauty of human aspiration.

Along the way, Allen trots out a troupe of classic literary characters played by actors who seem to be having a lot of fun, and the high is contagious.

Owen Wilson plays Gil, a present-day hack Hollywood screenwriter trying to work on a serious novel as he visits Paris with his uptight fiance Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her even more uptight parents. Inez is hanging out a lot with a pretentious British professor (Michael Sheen, wonderfully obnoxious) so Gil finds himself wandering the streets one night when the clock strikes 12.

Just then, a car from the 1920s pulls up and offers Gil a ride to a party where, to his astonishment, he meets Scott (Tom Hiddleston) and Zelda (Alison Pill) Fitzgerald, who in turn introduce him to Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll), Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates) and numerous other literati and artists (Adrien Brody is particularly ripe as Salvador Dali).

Soon Gil finds himself transported nightly to his favorite artistic period and enthralled with a lovely woman named Adriana (Marion Cotillard). Is it a dream come true, or just a dream?

The fantasy is sweet, but there's also real tension here, with Gil both a prisoner and traveler in time. Ultimately, though, and happily, "Midnight in Paris" is a loving embrace of the city, of art and of life itself.