I actually saw this a couple weeks ago and haven't had time to type up anything here to offer up my two cents. Been busy with my own film work, thankfully!
All in all, I thought this was very good, and probably the best Woody film since Sweet & Lowdown... better than Match Point and VCB, both overall and I would say mainly because this beats both those films hands down as actually feeling / looking / sounding / acting / etc like an actual "vintage" Woody Allen film.
Woody, for the first time since S&L IMO, showed some actual creative ambition here, that was once something of his trademark. He has flirted with it since S&L (eg Melinda & Melinda's split stories, Scoop's reporter from the grave, Whatever Works' Larry David talking to the camera, etc) but it always looked tagged on and never integrated like we all know he's capable of. This looked refined... this was not a 1st draft, as one might guess previous '00 work has been (eg Scoop, Tall Dark Stranger, etc). When was the last time Woody had the artistic guts to do something as tastefully bold as letting the entire opening Bechet recording play out over shots of Paris? The Manhattan comparisons are obvious, but still it worked wonders and it certainly gave the film a chance to hit the ground running.
I was critical of cinematographer Darius Khondji's work before in Anything Else - here he looks to (mostly) be deftly applying the "Woody Allen style" of shooting as set by Gordon Willis and Carlo DiPalma and work with it. Beautiful photography abounds but most importantly, for the first Woody film in a while... possibly since 1998-2002 stretch, the photographer allows long shots to work. So many DPs since Zhao Fei / Nykvist / DiPalma have not understood how and why Woody's long shot style works - Darius proves he gets it and is on the right track. The great news here is that he's working with Woody on his next film, the Rome project. I hope this collaboration continues for a while, Woody could use the stability and Darius has proven he's capable of understanding this method. Big kudos to the photography work.
Owen Wilson was surprisingly tolerable in working with Woody's dialogue and characters. He's thrown into the deep end here with the lightning quick 20's literary and arts world references, and he actually sounds like someone who enjoys all of it. A friend of mine commented that early 90's John Cusack would've knocked it out of the park but I think Owen still gets it over the fence (to torture the metaphor).
Woody's writing is still not without his late period sloppiness. While leaps and bounds more polished than anything he's done in 11 years, as mentioned above the McAdams' character's family stuff is by the numbers... Woody is clearly not interested in this part of the script as much as he is to the '20's stuff. Especially in the
breakup scene - it happens lightning fast... just ridiculous. The parents come in and go through shock / confusion / dismay / disappointment / acceptance / supportive / happiness / laughter in about 2 minutes or less. And that's the tail end of the same continous shot of Gil announcing the breakup, accusing her of having an affair, confirming the affair, accepting it, breaking it off, confronting the parents, deciding to move to Paris and leaving relatively amicably. Could be one of the worst scenes Woody has ever written - just seems like the actors are all improvising off the condensed treatment of a 10 - 20 minute portion of the film.
The earlier scenes are better, thankfully, but they still teeter on being outright bad. Some jokes and situations save the day (the Sheen vs Wilson stuff I thought was played well).
Carli Bruni did a good job, although her role seemed unnecessarily expanded to feature her more. Which is a let down considering
her last two scenes - explaining some of the history to Gil and translating the book for Gil - were probably for the 20's antique dealer Gil ends up with at the end. It makes sense as it would've expanded her role a bit more and given Gil a reason to be with her more often, see the rapport develop, etc.
Thankfully, most of the film focused on the parts that truly inspired Woody and those scenes really swung (often literally). The set designs were ace stuff, and Woody seemed to be genuinely excited about doing a period piece again after 10 years away from it, the longest of his career. In the past it's clear anytime he wanted to treat himself to a playful indulgence that reinvigorated him creatively, he would work on a period project. 10 years is far too long to spend away from that kind of muse.
And part of the benefit seemed to come from the premise and having to fill many of roles based on likeness rather than star status. These "no-name" character role acting talents sparkled working with Woody's material and gave the film extra traction that has far too often been missing in his films in the past 10 years. Corey Stoll's turn as Hemingway alone is an example of how this will definitely propel one of these acting talents to greater heights (how many times has that been said about a small character part in the past 10 years?). Adrian Brody's cameo though is an exception - really well done and hilarious to boot.
The music was also great (great job by Allen Jazz band player Conal Fowlkes for his Cole Porter piano work), and while some of the possibilities the concept of the script opened up to weren't completely fulfilled (see above postings for examples), overall it played really well and has rightfully earned a solid box office response ($33m domestic and $61m worldwide as of this posting, well on it's way to becoming the biggest global box office hit for Woody, probably going to pass $100m mark and possibly in range to pass Hannah & Her Sisters as his biggest US box office success). I saw it twice here in Windsor, where Woody's films only play if the box office returns warrant a theatre owner giving it a shot, and both times the theatre was packed and ended with a round of applause. I've never seen that before. If this is going to end up setting a new box office hit standard for Woody, I'm really glad it'll be this rather than Match Point or VCB - this *is*, without question, a "Woody" film, and it will be nice to see his audience reward him for making something great that isn't a British crime / murder thriller or a complicated sex menage-a-tois. This is a smart film that isn't afraid to be smart, and, like many of Woody's best films, isn't afraid to leave some audience behind if it strives to reference something more than basic emotions. I was the only person laughing at the Buñuel joke but I'm glad it was in there. That's what's great about Woody films - maybe down the road, after some of the people who enjoyed this film look up some of the names and faces in it, will watch this again sometime and get that joke.
Anyways, overall I'd give it a 4/5, if not maybe a 4.5 depending on how I feel when I watch it again down the road sometime. Light but meaningful, beautiful yet fun. Definitely solidly in the upper half of Woody's film catalog, if not in the lower regions of his best 15 or so works. How about that for a compliment? Well earned.
