BEFORE: Well, if last night's film was all about pattern recognition, this one seems to be about wish fulfillment. Linking from "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger", Anthony Hopkins was also in "Thor" with Tom Hiddleston (last seen in "War Horse").
THE PLOT: While on a trip to Paris with his fiancée's family, a nostalgic screenwriter finds himself mysteriously going back to the 1920s every day at midnight.
AFTER: This was another tricky one for me, because it had some of the same Woody Allen elements I've seen many times - namely, a writer struggling with a novel, and surprise, he's also having relationship troubles and torn between two women, trying to decide if he should have an affair.
What sets this film apart is that one of the women lived in the 1920's, so he can only interact with her when he somehow travels back in time each night - and it's never quite explained how he manages to do this. There's no time machine involved, and it's never stated whether he's actually traveling back or hallucinating, or imagining his trips. While this isn't an inherent deal-breaker - "Somewhere in Time" and "Kate & Leopold" didn't explain the time travel either - it does lead one to wonder what might really be taking place here.
In a manner to "The Purple Rose of Cairo", something impossible is depicted, and then the audience has to decide how to handle it. But to what end does this all take place? Our writer gets to interact with some very notable writers, from Hemingway to Gertrude Stein to F. Scott Fitzgerald, and artists like Salvador Dali and Toulouse-Lautrec, very few of them get the chance to do anything other than introduce themselves. Why introduce Salvador Dali into the story just to give him the chance to say "Hi, I'm Salvador Dali!" ??
So, to me this is something of a wash - other than get his book reviewed by Gertrude Stein, I can't see the benefit of visiting 1920's Paris and hobnobbing with famous people. How does meeting all these notables give him badly-needed insight? I'm not sure I follow the logic. The one point that got made was the fact that people in every era tend to over-romanticize the past, but I'm not sure that's enough to hang a movie plot on.
Also starring Owen Wilson (last heard in "Cars 2"), Rachel McAdams (last seen in "The Notebook"), Marion Cotillard (last seen in "Anchorman 2"), Kathy Bates (last seen in "Shadows and Fog"), Michael Sheen (last seen in "Laws of Attraction"), Carla Bruni, Adrien Brody (last seen in "The Thin Red Line"), Corey Stoll (last seen in "Salt"), Kurt Fuller, Mimi Kennedy.
RATING: 5 out of 10 Cole Porter records
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