The first night belonged to Woody. "Midnight in Paris," the latest Woody Allen film to play the Cannes Film Festival, kicked things off on Wednesday night with a gala premiere, full of beautiful people in tuxedos and gowns negotiating the broad steps into the Palais des Festivals and then warmly applauding a film that almost everybody agreed was thoroughly entertaining.
The most notable of those gowns, incidentally, may have belonged to "Midnight in Paris" star Rachel McAdams, whose lengthy train was clearly an object of amusement to her director and her co-star Owen Wilson (left).
Also read: Cannes Opens with Woody Allen's Parisian Valentine
Sasha Stone offered her take on the film to readers of TheWrap, and lots of others weighed in as well:
Peter Debruge, Variety: "If 'Midnight in Paris' feels like another of Allen's one-way fantasies, it ultimately manages to get off easy thanks to Wilson's unassuming charm."
Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter: "As beguiling as a stroll around Paris on a warm spring evening — something that Owen Wilson’s character here becomes very fond of himself — 'Midnight in Paris'represents Woody Allen’s companion piece to his 'The Purple Rose of Cairo,' a fanciful time machine that allows him to indulge playfully in the artistic Paris of his, and many other people’s, dreams."
Anne Thompson, Thompson in Hollywood: "a sweet funny nostalgic romantic confection that proves a lively counterpoint to the dark and moody fare that tends to dominate the Cannes selection."
Scott Foundas, L.A. Weekly: "something magical, as sublimely enchanting as any Allen film since 1985's 'The Purple Rose of Cairo.'"
Jeff Wells, Hollywood Elsewhere: "On one level it's almost a trifle except that it's thoughtful and reality-based (whatever that term may be worth in this context) and very funny ... although in a way that requires the viewer to be at least glancingly familiar with the world of Paris in the 1920s and 1880s and '90s ('la Belle Epoque') … As we all know that leaves out a significant chunk of 2011 moviegoers so we'll see how it plays."
Eric Kohn, indieWIRE: "mostly a conventional and generally satisfying example of Woody Allen flexing his wit."
Guy Lodge, In Contention: "this is a film that trades in emphatic cultural and historical caricature, a picture-book approach that will delight some viewers even as it strikes others as aggravatingly twee, but one Allen commits to with the take-it-or-leave-it dispatch of a 75-year-old master working in quick-sketch mode."
Drew McWeeny, HitFix: "second-tier [Allen], which means it is merely charming and enjoyable and sophisticated and smart, shot with a luminous beauty by Darius Khondji, and as second-tier Allen goes, it is a lovely reminder of just how effortless he can make it all seem."
In the Chicago Sun-Times, Barbara Scharres calls the Allen movie "loads of fun," then moves from her take on the film into bits from its press conference, where Allen explained where his take on Paris came from: "I learned about Paris the way all Americans do – from the movies."
