Midnight in Paris Review

The premise is a single joke told with enough conviction to become an argument: a screenwriter with a novel in a drawer steps into a Peugeot at midnight and ends up drinking with Hemingway. Owen Wilson turns out to be the ideal delivery system for these rhythms, since a California drawl strips out the neurotic New York edge and leaves the wistfulness behind. The party guests are caricatures by design, Corey Stoll's Hemingway speaking entirely in declarations about courage and death, Adrien Brody's Dali fixated on rhinoceroses, and the film knows exactly how long each cameo can run.

Darius Khondji shoots Paris at magic hour with the frankness of a postcard, defensible in a film about romanticizing a place. The contemporary scenes are the weaker half, with Rachel McAdams stuck playing an obstacle rather than a person and her parents drawn as broad targets. What redeems it is the final act, when Adriana wants to escape to the 1890s and the whole logic of golden ages collapses on cue. Slight, funny, and more cleanly built than most of what surrounds it.