After pottering around in London for a while and producing some pretty dire movies, Woody Allen is moving on to another European city, Paris, with his new film entitled, Midnight in Paris. It’s already been announced that this will open the Cannes Film Festival on May 11th and today a trailer has been released. The film has a very impressive cast headlined by Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Michael Sheen, Kathy Bates, Carla Bruni, Adrien Brody and Marion Cotillard.
From the trailer however it just looks to be another average to poor, late period Woody Allen movie, the kind of mediocrity that we’ve sadly come to expect from him. It appears to be suffering from the Match Point/Cassandra’s Dream/You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger issue of doing a picture postcard version of the setting, rather than exploring the nature of the setting. Although I’m sure detractors could say the same about Manhattan.
Mind you kudos has to be given to the man, he is a cinema legend and releasing a film a year is nothing to sneer at. Plus when photographing Barcelona in Vicky Cristina Barcelona he had a lot of success and this looks to be getting back to the same kind of visual sheen and story of that. However my advice to Woody Allen is: take a break. Have a look below at the trailer and judge for yourself.