(Spoilers) Midnight in Paris Review

***SPOILER WARNING: Spoilers may be found in the post below about VARIOUS ITEMS. And I'm going to add in a bit of filler text here to limit how much of the main article gets shown in a preview. That should take care of most of it. Hopefully. And away we go. SPOILER WARNING. ***

Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, and Marion Cotillard, why not?

Overview
Gil (Owen Wilson), a writer, goes through some self-discovery in Paris after a few trips back in time with some great artists and a woman. There is some romance, some comedy, some science fiction, and plenty of drama.

Good or Bad?
The only thing I went into this movie with was the knowledge that Rachel McAdams and Marion Cotillard were in it. Either of the two are usually enough to get me to give a movie a chance. I was also made aware of Owen Wilson's presence from the program description on the television. It took me a while before remembering that Rachel and Owen were in The Wedding Crashers together.  Going back a bit to the original point: I didn't know what to expect story-wise.

Midnight in Paris ended up being, in part, about a car that arrived at a location in Paris at midnight. This car sent Gil, and supposedly others, back in time, still in Paris, to the early part of the 1900s. At this particular time, historic artists like F. Scott Fitzgerald (I know he's a writer, I lumped him into the "art" category) and Picasso were all hanging out in the area. I didn't completely understand the logistics of how the whole time-travelling thing worked, but I didn't put too much thought into it. The time-travel felt like a vehicle that would give Gil the support and unique perspectives for him to grow and have an epiphany.

The funny thing is that I didn't know about the time travel part initially. I thought it was a giant theme party where attendees were reluctant to break character. It took until the second or third trip back to realize it was supposed to be real time travel.

Whatever romance Rachel and Owen had in The Wedding Crashers, it was not in Midnight in Paris. I found Inez (Rachel McAdams) to be detestable, and I usually think Rachel's the best character in her other movies. That was probably the point since part of Gil's self-discovery was this realization. One of the other major characters Gil met in the past was played by Marion Cotillard who became his love interest. They looked much better onscreen compared to the relationship Gil and Inez had. Some nice contrasting going on? Anyway, the acting looked strong all around to me.

I enjoyed the movie a lot. It seemed to have a pretty light and fun tone. Despite not taking itself too seriously, it still delivered on the more serious subject matter. Paris -- or whatever city was used to stand in -- looked incredible and the locations used for filming all looked beautiful. Length felt appropriate with all important bases covered. Wouldn't mind watching this again if it's on.