Magic in the Moonlight, 2014.
Written and Directed by Woody Allen.
Starring Emma Stone, Colin Firth, Hamish Linklater, Marcia Gay Harden, Jacki Weaver, Erica Leerhsen, Eileen Atkins, and Simon McBurney.
SYNOPSIS:
A romantic comedy about an Englishman brought in to help unmask a possible swindle. Personal and professional complications ensue.
Woody Allen has released a film every consecutive year since 1982 and has seldom missed a year since his first feature What’s Up, Tiger Lily? in 1966. His film releases are as much part of the ‘must see’ list of any given years as any directors, but the results can be mixed. For every Midnight in Paris you get a From Rome With Love and with the likes of Everyone Says I Love You comes The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. His latest offering Magic in the Moonlight is by no means Allen at his best, but I’ll take average woody Allen over just about most other so-called comedies.
We open as the usual credit sequence plays over Cole Porter’s ‘You Do Something To Me’ with its apt lyrics hidden in favour of an all-musical number, for indeed this film is all about the mystery and voodoo that can lie between two people. Set in 1928, Colin Firth plays Stanley, a fine English gentleman (who just so happens to speak like Woody if he were alive in the 1920s) who masquerades as Wei Ling Soo, the mysterious Chinese stage magician on tour around the world. He knows every trick there is and is more than happy to debunk Sophie, a young American girl (Emma Stone), who claims she has physic abilities as nothing more than a hoax and a fraud. Everyone believes her to be the real deal, including Stanley’s aunt and his best friend, but Stanley is a man of science and fact, and what follows is 90 minutes of lightweight fun where Stanley tries to disprove her claims whilst, inevitably, falling for her as well.
Sophie is, of course, in a relationship with a younger and far wealthier man, but if there’s one thing we know from Woody Allen films it’s that relationships are anything but sacred and affairs are almost a prerequisite of his screenplays. The film itself is light in content, stretching to fill its 90 minutes and moving at a pace so unhurried its actually quite refreshing, but subplots like this romance do little to add any true weight to proceedings; but this being a Woody Allen comedy, you’re expecting the dialogue to be razor sharp, witty, intelligent, and consistently amusing and for the most part it meets the standards you’d associate with his quality, even if it never threatens to rival his best work. The lightweight tone also extends to Emma Stone as Sophie who never really convinces as the Woody Allen female lead in the same way Scarlett Johansson did when she was his muse (Stone is also the lead in his 2015 picture), but then again this film is more on the level of Scoop than Match Point, so one can’t judge too harshly but next to Colin Firth her limitations are seen.
The period setting makes for most of the film’s charm and allows for the slow, pedestrian pacing. Even if the content is light and doesn’t cover any real new ground for Allen, Magic in the Moonlight really rises above recent efforts from the director in terms of just how beautiful the film looks, thanks to cinematographer Darius Khondji’s gorgeously soft lighting throughout and how it helps to capture the period detail which is exquisitely brought to life by the costumes, cars, furniture, and scenery. It could be easy to overlook the Khondji’s work here in such a lightweight film, but he shows just how good and varied his talents are; after all, this is the man who gave David Fincher’s Se7en its distinctive look and helped to make James Grey’s The Immigrant on one the most strikingly beautiful films of the year.
Despite having ‘magic’ in the title, Allen doesn’t have the wonder and joy of films like Midnight in Paris, The Purple Rose of Cairo, or Everyone Says I Love You, nor does it have the influence of other film makers’ work to hold our interest like Shadows and Fog or Stardust Memories when the actual plot is weaker, but Magic in the Moonlight it’s still the best comedy I’ve seen this year which may actually say more about that state of modern comedy than the overall triumph of this particular film.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Rohan Morbey – follow me on Twitter.
Originally published September 21, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
