Woody Allen does not read the
reviews of his films. Some people think he should, but I think it is a good
thing. Only a film director utterly unaware of the ‘narrative’ other people are
making up for him – early funny ones, great middle period, the grim Bergman
period (totally underappreciated), the lazy later ones and the recent return to
form (which seems to have happened at least three times) – would have a
confidence to release films so set in their own unique ways as You Will Meet
A Tall Dark Stranger and To Rome With Love either side of something
as crowd-pleasing as Midnight in Paris. Some of Woody Allen’s best films
are simple elaborations on themes already tackled elsewhere – the grim but
brilliant Another Woman and the carefree musical Everyone Says I Love
You share the same plot point. That said, Allen’s new film, Magic in the
Moonlight, will most likely play like an unintentional gift to his more
negative critics – evidence for their (incorrect) assertion that he is simply
not trying anymore. Magic in the Moonlight is indeed wafer-thin, light
entertainment, but does it suggest that Allen isn’t that bothered?
Colin Firth plays Stanley, a
magician who spends his free time exposing fraudulent psychics. Invited by his
old friend Howard (Simon McBurney) to the south of France, where a rich family
are besotted with a new psychic Sophie (Emma Stone), whose tricks even Howard
cannot figure out. Stanley agrees, but after meeting Sophie, he cannot uncover
her secrets or explain how she does it. He begins to wonder if there really is
something supernatural about her and, hence, about the world.
Magic in the Moonlight then
is about a moody and outspoken atheist who is suddenly faced with something
that science cannot explain. Stanley cannot sleep at night such is his fear of
a meaningless existence and when Sophie’s abilities start to break down his
(dis)beliefs, he is first sceptical and then overjoyed. Firth is good here,
overwhelmed by joy and excitement – as we all would if we suddenly found proof
of the possibility of an afterlife. The twist ending is both totally expected
and yet mildly disappointing, like waking out of a cheery dream.
Beyond that, there is
disappointingly little to Magic in the Moonlight. The film is full of
conversations about atheism and faith, as if the film needs to establish the
stakes of this dilemma that we have all surely gone through at one point or
another. Most of the dialogue is heavy on exposition – there is a lot of
explaining for a film as slight as this. Some scenes wander badly while some of
the snappy scenes are not nearly snappy enough. Sometimes it feels like
something Noel Coward wrote in the early-1940s, which isn’t a particularly good
thing. The film feels stretched at 97 minutes – already a bit on the long side
for a Woody Allen film – considering that a film as deep and rich as Another
Woman was twenty minutes shorter. There are some jokes about Nietzsche but
they aren’t good ones – there is no sense here that Allen has even read
Nietzsche. In fact there are very few jokes, a lot less than the plot would
suggest and a lot less than can be expected of Allen.
Taken as light entertainment, the film is fine. It is
entertaining and it is diverting, but only in the way of a TV movie scheduled
in the middle of a lazy, rainy afternoon. The cinema feels like the wrong venue
for this film, since the cinema encourages more attention and focus than this
film can sustain. It is decent, but it is wholly disposable in a way that other
supposedly disposable Allen films were not. The ending is so uncertain and
rushed it feels like an awkward shrug. It is probably the first Allen film to
feel as if it was made only to sustain his one-film-a-year record. So, a bit
dull, not awful but not nearly funny enough either, reasonably likable when it
is playing. Though you can’t help but wonder what some first-time
writer-director would do with these actors, this budget and this idea.
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