The Movie That Made Me Dislike Paris

Midnight in Paris is a very strange movie to me, as everyone seems to love it except for me and a few other people. Personally, I think it’s one of the best worst movies I’ve seen. It’s so bad, it’s good. But, people consider it to be unironically the best film of all time. While I understand this partially as the film is well done cinematographically, people also seem to either completely disagree with me on what the film’s issues are. What do I think? Let’s find out.

The film starts as a travel documentary. The first five minutes are filled with shot after shot of Paris with jazz music in the background. Why anyone thought that that would be a good idea is astounding to me. Nothing is said, there are no elements of the story that are introduced, there’s simply five minutes of shots of Paris. I have never seen another film that leaves you as bored as quickly as Midnight in Paris does. Even The Room starts off with plot, Midnight in Paris starts off with a montage.

This film made me hate Paris. For a long time, Paris was the first place I wanted to go outside of the United States. But, because of this movie, that changed. Now, I never want to step foot in Paris. The film greatly inflates the worth of Paris, making it seem like it’s the greatest city ever. And, it was incredibly obvious about it. (It started off with a montage of Paris.) Because it was so highly praised, I started to hate the city for it. Surely, I thought, it couldn’t be as good as this movie made it out to be. Like a man droning about his new lover, I thought to myself, “ugh”. Also, the reasons they gave as to why Paris is so great weren’t good reasons at all. Gil cited the architecture and the history, which is true of any other city. Maybe if they weren’t so obvious about it, I wouldn’t’ve noticed. But they were.

This next part is a spoiler, so if you don’t want spoilers, skip to the next paragraph. The entire idea of the movie is that you should be living in the present, and not trying to live in the past. While the movie does an okay job of exploring this theme, it ends with him finding someone who appreciates his love for the 1920s, which entirely discredits what this movie is trying to explore.

They were obvious about a lot of things. If a character was disappointed in his love life, you would be told that the character was upset about their love life. There was nuance, at first, but characters would eventually state exactly how they’re feeling. Oftentimes it felt like the writer felt we were all stupid and wouldn’t understand what characters were saying if they were subtle about it.

The film had plenty of characters, though it needed much fewer than it contained. Every writer and artist found around Paris during the ‘20’s appeared in this movie. They would come in, say a few words, and that’s it. You got an okay view of what some of these characters were feeling during this time, though their arcs were never resolved. You’d see Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald for a moment, you’d see her conflicts, but you’d never see anything beyond that. No development, and no resolution.

While the film has horrible writing, the technical aspects are really impressive. The film uses orange and green tones properly throughout the film to showcase the romanticism of Paris. The music in the film fits perfectly within the narrative, as does the costume and set design. While this doesn’t make it a good movie, it would be unfair of me not to mention the several positives.

While this shouldn’t bother me as much as it did, Owen Wilson is in this movie and he is very much Owen Wilson. I don’t think there will ever be a time where I take Owen Wilson seriously. Even in interviews I can’t help but laugh at him because of the simple fact that he is Owen Wilson. It’s not that he’s necessarily a bad actor, but I can’t ever consider him to be a good actor either. I can never feel emotionally attached to any of his characters if they’re meant to be viewed as serious. It’s just too hard to see the man as anything but a joke.