Magic in the Moonlight

Plan to see it next week

One reviewer alluded to the fact that it mirrors Woody's life - Older man falling for much younger girl. He is a master film maker and storyteller but after that things get muddled. I wonder what his feelings are re Bullets closing. Does he put part of the blame on his insistence on period music or does he just fluff it off?

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Whizzer, boy are you right about the Henry Higgins/ Eliza Doolittle comparison! At a certain point I turned to my honey and said now is when he sings "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face" just before Colin Firth uttered words to that effect practically cribbed from a heretofore undiscovered Alan Jay Lerner lyric.

That aside, we had a great time as well. Sure it's just a bon-bon, but sometimes that's just what you want to taste. Much of the dialogue really does sparkle and a late scene with Eileen Atkins where everything clicks neatly into place is worthy of Noel Coward at his most humanistic.

This is no masterwork like MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, but if you keep your expectations moderate, it's a lovely hour and a half.

Respectfully differ. Dull, unfunny and one of Allen's least accomplished. The age difference didn't exactly bother me, though I would have found a pairing of contemporaries far more refreshing and interesting. No fault of Stone and Firth, who did their best which is a lot I found the romance unpersuasive and the plot's very promising premise unrealized.

Updated On: 8/3/14 at 12:45 PM

"One reviewer alluded to the fact that it mirrors Woody's life …"

Wow. What an original insight.

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If his work mirrored his life, he would have written a new adaptation of Lolita by now.

The last time I re-read Nabokov's masterful novel, I was struck by how bizarrely prophetic it seems of Woody Allen. Neurotic Jewish intellectual reinvents himself under an intentionally bland pseudonym with some resemblance to his real name and creates a new persona as a cultured and worldly sophisticate. He has an affair with his stepdaughter, and plans to eventually turn her into a brood mare for more granddaughters he can abuse.

Back then, it was just the darkest of dark comedy. If it were new today, there would be libel allegations.

If I could, I'd pull Nabokov from behind a Lolita poster to tell you you know nothing of his work.

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He means, his whole fallacy is wrong.

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I believe there is a quotation somewhere where he implies it, without saying it directly (does Msr. H.H. Ever say ANYTHING directly?). I noticed it on one of my re-reads. If I can skim through and relocate it, I will.

The Times review suggests an in-house editorial allegiance to the pre-Oscar Kristof stand, i.e. you're with Dylan or against her. The entire re-opened (by the Times) abuse case briefly became a progressive litmus test on FB, stand against Allen and the Deluded Actresses Cajoled Into Making His Pedophilia-Inspired Films, or you're part of the rape culture. (Yes, someone told me I was part of the rape culture for not condemning "Blue Jasmine.") By the time we got to finger-wagging that Blanchett should refuse her Oscar, it was all silly. Whenever I point out that no one who attended "The Pianist" or rooted for Polanski's Oscar was accused of being a card-carrying member of The Rape Culture, including Ms. Farrow, a character witness for ol' Roman, an actual convicted rapist (wrap your brain around that one), the issue ebbed. But if A. O. Scott doesn't like the latest opus, fine. Dragging the man-who-loves-little-girls into the critique yet again feels like a C- paper in some fourth tier college's film class.

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Updated On: 8/9/14 at 11:27 AM

A COUPLE OF (YAWN) SPOILERS.

I went Sunday and found it startlingly uninteresting. The Khonji cinematography is (predictably) breathtaking. As are the locations, all shot with "lemony" light, as one critic pronounced it. For a few minutes, that sustains. But he's photographing so many talky scenes that trail off shapelessly. In the first half, they just start, stop, never end. Time is taken getting characters in and out of cars and up and down stairs while little happens. The premise isn't bad, but Allen seems obsessed with using it (only) as a riff on spirituality rather than just telling a decent love story, albeit one with a debt to Shaw (and Woody Allen!). The lack of even intellectual chemistry between Stone and Firth is deadly. She is lovely but strangely charmless. He seems crotchety and sour, but not in any compelling, edgy way. (You can't believe this man enjoys performing magic; he's without a whiff of show biz passion for performing or colorful eccentricity; a snooty professor slumming as a European vaudeville act, or something?) They don't even seem to be inhabiting the same moments, other than one beat in an observatory -- and Firth falls asleep.

People wanting Atkins to get an Oscar nomination -- did they actually see the film? She's badly used and handled. And one scene in which she plays solitaire -- the Higgins family, i.e. a steal from "Pygmalion" -- keeps her hooded and busy and without any real presence. Allen seems to have been so intimidated by her he didn't bother to direct Atkins's scenes; she flounders, which doesn't seem possible (and wears one white costume repeatedly, inadvertent motif? One that isn't explained). And the continuity is bizarre. Atkins is in an accident, but recovers off camera (instantly) and behaves the same way, in the same costumes, afterward. And what about poor Hamish Linklater, sort of doing Tommy Tune in "The Boyfriend." Having just seen him in Central Park -- walking away with "Much Ado" -- I couldn't believe how dreary he came off.

The storytelling is both rushed (overall) and drawn-out (individual beats -- those entrances!). And the movie is devoid of a single really good house laugh -- which it desperately needs -- the most shocking missing element of all. It reads like a first draft, before Allen went back in to hone and sharpen a single moment. It's a flaccid debate about faith and spirituality and science and in every way but its look a real let-down. Still, pretty to look at. The costumes are sumptuous.

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Updated On: 8/12/14 at 06:10 PM