Film review: Woody Allen's Magic in the Moonlight
Woody Allen's latest film is no Midnight in Paris, nor an odd-couple classic such as Annie Hall or Manhattan.
Magic in the Moonlight
Starring: Colin Firth, Emma Stone, Simon McBurney
Director: Woody Allen
Category: IIA
3/5 stars
film is no , nor an odd-couple classic such as or . Cynics will struggle to appreciate this breezy romantic comedy about a cynic who struggles to appreciate the magic of romance. But it's unlikely the director-writer even cares.
The 78-year-old filmmaker seems merely to be going through the motions in this featherweight film without giving much thought to anything. The very first scene, for example, introduces us to fabled English illusionist Stanley Crawford (Colin Firth), heavily made up in yellowface, complete with a Fu Manchu moustache. Going by the "Chinese" stage name, Wei Ling Soo, Crawford makes an elephant disappear on the stage of a packed Berlin theatre in 1928.
One wonders why Allen didn't tackle the yellowface element more delicately, as other filmmakers have done. If he's remotely mindful of sensitive subjects, then he is not showing it with this story, which boils down to a much older man's desperate attempts to counter the lies of a young woman.
A master debunker when he isn't cutting women in half, Stanley is visited backstage by his childhood friend Howard Burkan (Simon McBurney), who invites him to expose a beautiful American mystic as a fraud. Sophie Baker (Emma Stone) is a comically solemn character who is allegedly preying on a gullible family holidaying in the south of France — or is she?
Regardless of her authenticity, everyone in the wealthy Catledge household seems happy with her presence, including the matriarch Grace (Jacki Weaver), who believes Sophie is genuinely able to summon her dead husband's spirit, and the smitten heir Brice (Hamish Linklater), who serenades Sophie with a ukulele.
None of this sits well with the rationalist Stanley. But even his crusade against spiritualism loses resolve as the clairvoyant — with lovely green eyes — offers uncanny insights into his past.
While the pair flaunt their nearly 30-year age gap like an elephant in the room, Firth and Stone are gifted such snappy dialogue, and exude enough charm individually, that our attention remains on track after they fall awkwardly in love in a planetarium bathed in moonlight.
For stretches, offers interesting scenarios in which faith in a metaphysical world appears to be a refuge from the purposeless reality in which Stanley resides. There's even an inspired scene where the grouch prays for God's mercy for the first time — before falling straight back to the embrace of reason.
But when Allen misguidedly turns his film into a tacky romantic farce with a late plot reversal, its spell is broken and the whole thing comes across as a conjurer's trick. Like the nonchalant sleights of hand by an old-time magician, is beguiling as it happens, but inconsequential once you see through the illusion.
