My Small Beef with “Midnight in Paris”

Forgive me, but I have to get this off my chest.

Why is no one talking about how Woody Allen ripped entire lines and caricatures from Hemingway’s “A Moveable Feast”? Why is everyone raving about this hacked-together borrowing of fun-facts and stereotypes of long-dead public figures? (Not everyone is raving, but I would say the vast majority are.) It was a double-layered cameo-fest where the historical figures were just snippets of their historically-remembered selves…many snippets of which were not even true. And those that did have a basis in fact were stolen from other people’s works. Why are critics raving about this child’s jigsaw puzzle of a movie?

If I’m going to be honest, though, I actually did enjoy watching this movie. It was fun and an interesting idea and the modern bits were insightful as far as how people relate to one another and lord knows I loved the era-specific costumes…but it wasn’t nearly as deep about nostalgia as it was trying to be, and the embarrassing parade of 1920s characters from “A Moveable Feast” was laughably trite and bordering on plagiarism. How are so many people applauding in awe of this half-assed exercise in bricolage?