Lost at Midnight

Creatures newcomer Kar-El is here to give you a take on a movie you probably haven’t seen and may have never even heard of, Woody Allen’s new movie film “Midnight in Paris”. And although at first glance it passed his time-tested rating system, there’s always more than meets the Tomatometer. And as you will see, it may not be worth the mental fatigue that comes along with it. Read the review after the jump.

I use Rotten Tomatoes as the principal guiding force for my life.  I find it to be more flexible than a daily planner, yet less structured than any sort of moral compass.  It is a time-tested system; I won’t see a movie in theaters unless that Tomatometer rises above 75%.  My reasoning makes sense: if I’m going to shell out the ten bucks (thirteen at Kips Bay NYC, my new haunt), the movie better be damn well worth it.  So I leave it to the professionals.  If the general consensus is that something is good, I’ll believe it to be true.  It’s Wikipedia logic and it works for me.

With my system in hand, I took to the streets this weekend to see Midnight in Paris (currently 92% RT). Certified fresh.   The new Woody Allen flick stars Owen Wilson, as a nostalgic and frustrated Hollywood screenwriter, trying to cut it as a novelist.  He romps around Paris with his fiancé, played by Rachel McAdams and eventually wanders back in time.  What I imagined would be another chapter in the Cleary Family tradition, turned into a series of chance encounters with the great minds of the Golden Age.

When I walked in the theater I noticed two things.  The first was that I was the only person in the joint under 40.  The second was that my fountain beverage was in fact Diet Coke, and not the original Coke that I had requested. You can imagine my discomfort.

This movie was pitched to me as a chick flick and I walked in, by myself mind you, with chick flick expectations. Now, I have nothing against a good chick flick.  Far from it.  I cried during The Notebook and still think Joseph Gordon Levitt is better off for having known Summer.  But, unless your date is a forty year old art history major, you’re better off seeing Dark Side of the Moon.  Or moving there.  The movie is rife with cultural references from the 1920’s that flew entirely over my head.  The “insiders”, those particularly well acquainted with the personality traits of Zelda Fitzgerald, didn’t miss a beat.  It felt like that history class in high school, when the teacher would say something like “this test is going to be as hard as Chang Kai-Shek’s stance on immigration reform!” inevitably prompting the nerds in front to giggle out of their cargo shorts, but leaving you wondering if you have to study or would have time to watch OC reruns on the Oxygen network.  I found myself shrinking in my seat, avoiding the hateful glances of those who could tell I was too young or ignorant to get what the hell was going on.

So how could the critics have gotten it so wrong?  One theory is that they aren’t and I am and the movie was in fact marvelous (say it with no ‘r’ to get just the right tinge of elitism).  Another is that the critics, like the moviegoers are lemmings, walking off the cliff into a pool of their counterparts to avoid the stigma of being a non-intellectual.  Like no one wanted to admit they didn’t get it.  Owen Wilson was great and the writing was sharp, but as a college kid, I can’t recommend you go see it.  It reminded me of a fine goat cheese.  You know that feeling when you look at fine goat cheese and you can tell there’s some real quality there, but it may just not be for you.  And so I’ll tell you the same thing my parents told me in the third grade, when I asked them why Jason Biggs would stick his dick in a pie:  maybe when you’re older.