Movie Review: Midnight in Paris

After watching and reviewing Sherlock together, Kailana (of The Written World) and I decided we had to do that again! This time, we choose a movie and actually watched it together in real time... over Twitter! I KNEW that Twitter was good for something! How fun is that? Very fun I tell you! We are going to do it again sometime, and you know, you can join us if you want!

So the movie we watched was Midnight in Paris. It was up for some Academy Awards, but I'm not sure it ended up winning anything. Anyway, I'd never heard of it until Kailana suggested it, and then seeing it talked about during the Oscars. But when she proposed for us to watch it, she said that bookish people seem to really love it.

Well, now I can see why that is! What an awesome bookish sort of movie this is!

But first some info:

Movie: Midnight in Paris

Starring: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Michael Sheen, Kathy Bates

Genre: according to IMDB... comedy, fantasy and romance

Rating: PG13
MY Rating: Thumbs up!

Basically there's this guy who's a struggling writer. He goes with his fiance on a trip to Paris, along with her parents. She is going off doing all kinds of things with them, not really worrying about what he'd like to do, like wander the streets of Paris at midnight or take walks in the rain. And then there's his inner writer that longs for the good old days of the 20s. And suddenly (suspend your disbelief here!) he ends up in the 20s! And he goes to this party and there's the Fitzgeralds! And Hemingway! And Cole Porter! Later on he meets other cool and interesting people, and.... he falls in love. 


I loved the quietness of this movie. It's very basic and calm. Lots of good music and cool costumes (Downton Abbey style!) and so many characters from the literary and artistic world. The coloring was weird though. Very yellow. I think they were trying to give it a very warm feeling, but it was a bit overdone. Anyway, it made me want to go to Paris... and re-read The Great Gatsby to see if I "get it" the second go around.

Kailana's Questions to me:

What did you think of the characters and the casting choices?

Loved it! I've always liked Owen Wilson, he has a cool voice. But the people they got for the literary characters were spot on for me. Especially Hemingway. Awesome! And Adrien Brody for Salvador Dali... even though I don't really know much about Dali, he seemed perfect! Oh Zelda Fitzgerald of course, she was also perfect.

What were your thoughts on the music? 

I LOVED it! It reminded me a lot of the music from Chocolat, but when I looked it up it is NOT the same composer. Anyway, both the soundtrack, and the songs from the time period were awesome. Ragtime and jazz and Cole Porter. It was great. Here's some examples, because you can find anything on YouTube you know:

What was your favourite part of the movie?

I enjoyed it when Gil, our fearless hero, finally told Inez (his fiance) off! That was satisfying! But I think my very favorite was when he realized he was in the presence of Fitzgerald, and then later on Hemingway. His reaction is perfect!

Bottom line: I loved it!


Have you seen it? What did you think?


Here's the trailer:

Very fun to watch this together! We plan to do it again... maybe with the movie The Tree of Life.  Join us?