Directed by:
Woody AllenScreenplay:
Woody AllenCinematography:
Darius KhondjiCast:
Colin Firth, Emma Stone, Antonia Clarke, Simon McBurney, Ute Lemper, Catherine McCormack, Eileen Atkins, Erica Leerhsen, Jeremy Shamos, Hamish Linklater (more)VOD (4)
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Chinese conjuror Wei Ling Soo is the most celebrated magician of his age, but few know that he is the stage persona of Stanley Crawford (Colin Firth), a grouchy and arrogant Englishman with a sky-high opinion of himself and an aversion to phony spiritualists’ claims that they can perform real magic. Persuaded by his life-long friend, Howard Burkan (Simon McBurney), Stanley goes on a mission to the Côte d’Azur mansion of the Catledge family: mother Grace (Jacki Weaver), son Brice (Hamish Linklater), and daughter Caroline (Erica Leerhsen). He presents himself as a businessman named Stanley Taplinger in order to debunk the alluring young clairvoyant Sophie Baker (Emma Stone) who is staying there with her mother (Marcia Gay Harden). Sophie arrived at the Catledge villa at the invitation of Grace, who is convinced that Sophie can help her contact her late husband, and once there, attracted the attention of Brice, who has fallen for her head over heels. From his very first meeting with Sophie, Stanley dismisses her as an insignificant pip-squeak who he can unmask in no time, scoffing at the family’s gullibility. To his great surprise and discomfort, however, Sophie accomplishes numerous feats of mind-reading and other supernatural deeds that defy all rational explanation, leaving him dumbfounded. Before long, Stanley confesses to his beloved Aunt Vanessa (Eileen Atkins) that he has begun to wonder whether Sophie’s powers could actually be real. If they were to be true, Stanley realizes that anything might be possible, even good, and his entire belief system would come crashing down. What follows is a series of events that are magical in every sense of the word and send the characters reeling. In the end, the biggest trick Magic in the Moonlight plays is the one that fools us all. (Warner Bros. Home Entertainment)
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Reviews (7)
The equivalent of a garden party clown you know exactly what to expect from. Nothing miraculous, but solidly performed craft where you know and can see through every magic trick, but that’s also what you are expecting from it and that’s what you are getting. But with Woody Allen you might expect him to pull something of Copperfield-type dimensions out of the hat after all and not to satisfy himself with something cute and trivial. Maybe in the next show.
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Woody Allen shows that while he may be aging and his films can be somewhat verbose and meandering for some, without saying as much, when he takes on great actors like Firth or Stone, the result is still worth it. And this result is indeed worth it, not just because I have a weakness for illusions and magicians.
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The Prestige in Woody Allen style. Woody, however, does not delve deeply enough into the characters to make it work between them. The sparks between Colin Firth and Emma Stone work perfectly only in a single scene (the observatory) and do not work at all in the crucial last quarter of the film (after the point has been made). The two are incompatible by nature. If Woody himself played the rational wet blanket, the film would at least not be unrealistic and would not strive for an impossible romantic dimension, but it would be a pure cheerful comedy. Poor three stars.
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This review contains spoilers. I did not expect a lot of originality from the 78-year-old director’s forty-fifth film. Unfortunately, Woody Allen does even make an attempt at originality here and only dusts off previously used motifs: an older man in love with a younger woman (Manhattan, Whatever Works), communication with the dead (Alice), the importance of self-deception and faith in illusions (The Purple Rose of Cairo), and magicians, illusionists and hucksters (The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Scoop). The initial premise would well serve one of Allen’s literary stories, but in a feature-length film, it runs out of steam after the first half-hour. Instead of further developing the plot, the next thirty-plus minutes are spent watching two or more people driving slowly or carrying on a static dialogue about death, God and love beyond the grave. Due to the poorly motivated final twist (which doesn’t explain how Catledge was involved in the whole game), the film is not only misanthropic, but also misogynistic. The complaining and caustic – though thanks to Firth, also charming – boor is given the truth so that he can remain who he is. Conversely, we have no reason to admire his victim, whom he spends a large part of the film trying to prove is a liar (a parallel with Allen’s personal life?). A young and naïve con-woman suddenly appears before us and she incomprehensibly submits to the malicious aging cynic rather than to the young, virile and wealthy ukulele player (judging from the rising popularity of that instrument, I’m guessing that Allen is using Brice as a means of mocking today’s youth and passing fads). The only explanation for her decision in the final scene is Allen’s wish for things to be just like this, for beautiful “manic pixie dream girls” to submit to intolerably sarcastic intellectuals who refuse to change their behaviour in any way. It seems that Sophie’s only reward for helping Stanley to get his second wind is a daily reminder of her intellectual inferiority. Other than a few jokes, whose punchlines Allen’s fans will see coming from a mile away, and two irresistible actors, this defence of love between an older man and a significantly younger woman offers nothing more than a sophisticated visual aspect. However, the fact that the often audaciously long shots of the French Riviera and elegantly dressed actors were captured on wide-screen 35 mm film loses significance in cinemas with digital projectors, i.e. the vast majority of them. Appendix: Immediately after the screening, I felt this was worthy of two stars. This evening, however, I saw Menzel’s The Don Juans and realised that an old man being in love with his own ego can take a far more monstrous form. 55%
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This is a nice little film that seems to have actually been made in the late 1920s. By a slight coincidence, it features contemporary actors. Absolutely magnificent. Have I honestly ever not loved something that offered me Berlin in 1928? It would be very foolish to even expect such a thing. Of course, I can also never get enough of Colin, and that surprises me.
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