CHALLENGE: Paris in July

I've never been a huge Woody Allen fan, but when I saw Midnight in Paris was playing at my favorite local indie movie theatre I decided to go. I don't think I am a Woody Allen fan after watching this, and there are all kind of problems I could describe with the movie, but Paris was not one of them. It was beautiful.

Owen Wilson, an aspiring novelist, is in Paris with his fiancee. He is unsettled and questioning his career change. One night drunkedly walking back to his hotel one alone, he is invited into an old car to go for a ride. He ends up driving back to the 1920s of Paris, and partying with the Fitzgeralds, Scott and Zelda, Ernest Hemingway, Alice and Gertrude, plus assorted other famous painters and artists. I'm sure I missed many references to people and times. Isn't the movie poster gorgeous?

Owen Wilson was clearly channeling a young Woody Allen. The thing that really surprised me was the audience reaction. The movie was amusing, and I smirked, but the whole place would bust out laughing, guffawing actually, over the slightest comment or situation. It seemed to me that fans of Allen's movies were prepared to laugh uproariously at his movie. I'm guessing these people don't watch Wipeout and laugh at idiots falling down.