Magic in the Moonlight (2014)
(On Cable TV, May 2019) We’ll get to the crux of the Woody Allen Problem in a few sentences, but Magic in the Moonlight, taken at face value, is ordinary late-period Allen, gentle and romantic and icky and a bit ordinary even as it’s perfectly enjoyable. The biggest strengths of the film are its actors, especially Colin Firth as a skeptical magician being asked to unmask a suspected fake psychic, and Emma Stone playing said psychic. Both are quite good, even though they may not necessarily belong in the same story. But criticizing Woody Allen for older-man-much-younger-woman romance is like taking Spike Lee to task for a focus on race relation (well, or would be except that Lee’s agenda is actually socially admirable)—what else needs to be said? Still, the story isn’t that stunning—the focus on magic has been done in other Allen movie, and this one feels like a fairly limp attempt to tackle matters of faith and skepticism. The humour is more comfortable than hilarious (the biggest laugh of the film comes from a character revealing himself from behind a chair) and the dialogue is cute without being particularly revelatory. It feels like discount Allen from Allen himself, retreading familiar ground without extending himself. This being said, the film is visually remarkable—the portrait of the 1920s French Riviera is lush enough that we wish we could go there for a holiday, and it’s bolstered by some better-than-average cinematography for an Allen film. Substantial qualms about the rote intergenerational romance aside (and I’ll grant you that it takes a considerable amount of willpower to put it aside), Magic in the Moonlight is a serviceable film, not unpleasant but not worth harping about. It may help viewers wean themselves off Allen as he becomes older and less acceptable. As of five years later, Allen finally seems marginalized by the industry, with distributor troubles and a more irregular production schedule. (2018 was, if I’m not mistaken, the first year since 1981 in which there wasn’t “a new Woody Allen movie” in theatres.) Like an occasionally amusing guest who keeps pestering young women, Allen may finally have overstayed his welcome … and it’s about time.