“Convoluted Way to Make Simple Point”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

Midnight in Paris is Woody Allen’s latest film, it was the opening film at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, and it has been called one of Allen’s best movies in years.

You be the judge.

It takes place in the present, and so you might be surprised to know that some of the characters in it are Cole Porter, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Josephine Baker, Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, T.S. Eliot, and a number of other well-known and not-so-well-known artists from the past.

How can this be, you ask?

Well, therein lies the story, which may or may not be a pun.

Owen Wilson stars as Gil Pender, Rachel McAdams plays his fiancee, Inez, and they are freeloading along with her father and mother on a business trip to Paris that her father is taking.

Even though Gil is a successful Hollywood screenwriter, he becomes enamored with Paris, and he tells Inez, “I can see myself living here.”

Gil happens to be working on a novel, and he considers himself to be a Hollywood hack who never gave literature a shot.  He also says that he would have liked to have lived in Paris in the 1920s.

Well, one night after a serious wine tasting, Gil takes a walk through the streets of Paris while the others in the party all go dancing.

Gill is drunk, gets lost while trying to find the hotel, and just as a clock strikes midnight, a 1920s-era taxicab drives by full of party revelers.

They stop, and they invite Gil to join them and go to a party.

At the party, Gil is amazed to see Cole Porter playing the piano and singing, and he meets Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Later, they take their movable party to a cafe, and there is Ernest Hemingway sitting and drinking.  Gil tells Hemingway about his novel, and Hemingway offers to show it to Gertrude Stein for her opinion.

Gil leaves to get his manuscript at the hotel, but when he immediately turns around to arrange where they will meet, the cafe is gone.

The next night Gil tries to show Inez what had happened, but she gets bored and leaves before midnight.

But it happens again.

Midnight in Paris is a convoluted way to get a simple point across.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”