Midnight in Paris (2011)

“Midnight in Paris” is a delight. A reminder that Woody Allen is one of the best movie writers/directors out there no matter how creepy he is off camera. This is a comedy about a struggling American novelist (Owen Wilson) who becomes lost – figuratively and literally – in Paris’ nighttime streets, the lights and spirits of deceased artists, musicians and writers lulling him in utopia. Then he gets lost – in time – when a 1920s taxi, every night at midnight, whisks him away to the days of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Cole Porter and Ernest Hemingway, what Owen’s Gil considers the greatest era for artisans in history.

Back in 2010, Gil is the fiancé of a wealthy woman (Rachel McAdams) who as with her Tea Party parents rejects anything not American and has no appreciation of art. Only status. She openly pines for a former professor, a know-it-all played wonderfully by Michael Sheen, who starts off every sentence with, “If I’m not mistaken,” when he is indeed. So, yes, Allen uses the crutch of the wicked girlfriend to allow his male hero the right to fall in love with the more pure Adriana (Marion Cotillard), the mistress of Picasso. Small error in a grand film.

This just isn’t a new classic Allen comedy, it’s a tweak at nostalgia fever by both Tea Party Americans who long for the founding days of America, and daydreaming liberals who think art was somehow more pure 100 years ago. Both are wrong. “Midnight” has more wit than any film I’ve seen all year. The best joke has Hemingway, Picasso, Fitzgerald, Dali (Adrian Brody!) and dozens of others treated as biopic shadows. Picasso belligerent, Dali talking nonsense and Hemingway uttering every word like a bull fighter with a rifle slung over his shoulder. It is all a wicked satire ala homage. The great artists (and he never says it, but Founding Fathers) we uphold as gods are as false as the notion that life was happier in 178whatever. Fact: You were likely to die of small pox than live out a life of glorious freedom, no matter what cracked teapot Michelle Bachman says.

The best scene has Gil talking to Dali and his fellow surrealists, fretting over his time travel predicament, confused by the mess of his life, and they nod their heads, knowingly and approvingly. Flustered, Gill spits out, they’re surrealists, they have no concept of normal. Fantastic screenplay. Wilson has never been more likable, and “Inception” star Cotillard knocks every other female onscreen out of the park. A