Midnight in Paris opens with an homage to Paris with a jazz soundtrack in much the same way as Manhattan opened with scenes of New York and the Gershwin soundtrack.
The main character Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) is a would be novelist, in Paris with his finance & mother & father -in-law to be (the father-in-law is a right wing republican which enables Allen to get in possibly the first attack in a movie on the tea party). He travels back in time at night & meets characters from 1920's Paris, which leads to an amusing line before he realises what has happened when he can't believe the coincidence of meeting someone called F Scott Fitzgerald who has a wife named Zelda. He proceeds to meet all the arty types of 20's Paris including Hemingway, who is last seen drunk & trying to find someone to fight him, Gertrude Stein, Cole Porter, Picasso & Salvador Dali who is fixated on talking about the horn of a rhino.
Pender then travels back further in time to the 1890's and belle époque Paris & meets Toulouse-Lautrec. However he then realises that all this searching for a golden past just the allure of nostalgia & he should accept the present for what it is and create his own life.
I took a while to warm to Owen Wilson in the 'Woody Allen' role, I think possibly because the role was so similar to the ones Allen used to play but Wilson just isn't as funny.
The film was charming, beautiful and amusing, Allen's best, or, at least to me, most enjoyable for a long time.
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