WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME DRUNK HEMINGWAY WAS IN THIS MOVIE?!

A Night at the Jewseum: Woody Allen Molests His History Book

I walked out of Midnight in Paris with a smile on my face, and frankly, I’m shocked.  The last time I walked out of a Woody Allen film, it was on an airplane.  Not really, but that’s exactly the kind of joke you expect to hear in a Woody Allen movie, a hacky, Borscht belt knee-slapper interspersed amongst the polysyllabic bloviating and romanticized notions of intellectual cocktail chatter. The “turgid discussions about categorical imperativeses,” and whatnot.  More so than just about everything, comedy has a way of passing you by if you don’t evolve. A style tends to die as soon as people recognize its structure, and I thought the Woody Allen rom-com was dead. D-E-A-D, dead like the Farrelly Brothers.  I figured the critics writing glowing reviews were just nostalgia junkies. At best, I expected inoffensive chuckle fare, conversation fodder for my mom and men with ponytails, something to help them relive the glory days while boogeying to moderately-volumed Steely Dan. Instead, I actually laughed. Hell, I thoroughly f*cking enjoyed myself.

It’s not that it’s not Woody, it’s very Woody. At it’s most basic, Midnight in Paris is about a man searching for a woman who can appreciate the beauty of rainfall in Paris. If that was all it was about, I would’ve never stopped vomiting.  Thankfully, there’s a middle section. Owen Wilson plays Gil, one of the Woodiest of Woody Allen surrogates, a chatty screenwriter who wears earth-tone suits and shirts with no tie, and talks philosophically while gesturing with his hands. Visiting Paris with his bitchy fiancee played by Rachel McAdams (OH MY GOD YOU GUYS HER ASS IS A MIRACLE), Gil has dreams of one day ditching screenwriting and moving to Paris to write novels like his golden age idols. The story begins the way you’d expect a Woody Allen movie to begin.  With stagey, contrived dialog about psychology (“you’re living in the past!”) and politics (“Palin is a lunatic!”) that you could never imagine two people having in the real world unless they were pretending to be in a Woody Allen movie.  But quickly it leaps from Woody Allen-land into the realm of fantasy, becoming, like… this whole other thing.  This magnificent tall tale, this light-hearted Charlie Kaufman.

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Jesus, does Woody Allen ever sleep?  Trivia: the last full calendar year that passed without the release of at least one Woody Allen-written movie was 1976, between Love and Death and Annie Hall. At least one movie a year for 35 years, and still had time to bang his own stepdaughter.  Now that is impressive.

Anyway, the trailer for his new one, Midnight in Paris just hit, and you’ll never believe this, but it’s about verbose intellectual white people.  From the title I assumed it was another Paris Hilton nightvision sex tape, but nope, just turgid discussions about categorical imperatives.  Opposite Rachel McAdams and Michael Sheen, it stars Owen Wilson as an American in Paris who starts ditching his American wife and friends after midnight to go experience the true Parisian nightlife, which is no doubt far more fulfilling than whatever close-minded American crap he was doing before.  Gosh, I hope this is just like Eat, Pray, Love, where some rich A-hole explains the meaning of life to other rich A-holes.

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After the jump, you can watch the red-band trailer for the Farrelly Brother’s Hall Pass, which opens next Friday.  Thank God this one’s a little better than the first trailer, because watching the guys who made Kingpin stoop to tired pot-brownie jokes is like watching Mike Tyson get his ass kicked by a white kid outside a Dairy Queen. (Or like seeing anything Ice Cube has done since 2004).  This one’s better because at least with the vulgarity included, it has actual punch lines.  Broad sex comedy doesn’t work without swear words and crude talk, it just looks like Old Dogs.  Now it looks damn near watchable.  Not that my hopes are too high.  These are the same guys who put Carlos Mencia in their last movie.  My favorite part was when the guy who made a living off being Mexican couldn’t do a Mexican accent.

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A Hollywood Reporter article claims How Do You Know, the new James L. Brooks romantic comedy starring Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, and Jack Nicholson, cost $120 million (before tax breaks brought it down to $100 million).  Jesus, who planned this, the producers of the Spider-Man musical?

One reason for the price tag is old-fashioned salaries for the pic’s talent: Reese Witherspoon ($15 million), Jack Nicholson ($12 million), Owen Wilson ($10 million) and Paul Rudd ($3 million) received their quotes, and Brooks will earn about $10 million plus backend for writing, producing and directing. That’s about $50 million for the major talent alone.

The cost also was high because of the time Brooks devoted to production and postproduction and his decision to reshoot the beginning and end of the movie. “He’s slow and meticulous,” a person familiar with the production says. [THR]

For comparison, Watchmen cost $130 million, and the upcoming Spider-Man reboot cost $80 million.  But those don’t have Reese Witherspoon, so I guess it’s a wash. Even more amazing than the price tag is that they managed to spend 100 million dollars on this despite REESE WITHERSPOON WEARING THE SAME SHIRT FOR THE ENTIRE F*CKING MOVIE.

The Farrelly Brothers had an impressive string of movies I thought were really funny back in the 90s (Kingpin, Dumb and Dumber, Something About Mary, the script for the forgotten and underrated Outside Providence).   I’m not sure why their style of comedy doesn’t work anymore, exactly, but it’s hard to watch them try to force that same kind of movie past its sell-by date over and over again (Heartbreak Kid, anyone?).  Anyway, this one’s called Hall Pass, and it stars Owen Wilson and the eminently likable Jason Sudeikis as guys whose wives give them a week off from their marriage to do whatever they want.   They get so excited that they start eating pot brownies and wearing motorcycle helmets indoors like two 13-year-olds who’ve never heard of a prostitute.

[via Apple]