Magic in the Moonlight ** (2014, Colin Firth, Emma Stone, Marcia Gay Harden) – Movie Review

Colin Firth in a Woody Allen movie? Great! That’s the good news. Colin Firth stars as Stanley, a bitchy renowned professional stage magician working as Wei Ling Soo, who plans to uncover the truth behind celebrated spiritualist Sophie (Emma Stone), who claims to be a legitimate mystic, and her scheming mother (Marcia Gay Harden).

Alas, Stanley is soon beguiled by the lovely Sophie and intellect, reason and rationality go out of the window as he starts thinking that she might actually be able to communicate with the other world and that he might be falling in love with her. An unlikely romance ensues in writer-director Woody Allen’s 30s style drawing-room comedy, set in a picture-postcard France.

The bad news is, that after the highs of Blue Jasmine last year, this is not my favourite Woody Allen, I’m afraid. But it is pleasant and civilised with some good favourite actors, escapist scenery and lovely old tunes. It’s terrible to say it, but Firth looks, and is, old enough to be Stone’s dad (he’s 54, she’s 25). Cast well apart from his age, he gives a highly professional performance, but hasn’t got the witty lines in Allen’s script to make his performance funny. Writing homage antique comedy dialogue is a very difficult art. It needs Noel Coward or Oscar Wilde to pen the epigrams, and Allen proves the equal of neither of them, an American duck out water in this very British genre.

Firth basically gives a rerun of a performance we’ve seen several times before, in better circumstances. It was at its best in The Portrait of Dorian Gray, where Firth was actually funny. Oh, but then he had Wilde’s lines and story to work on. His rude, obnoxious, narcissistic character Stanley is just a turnoff. You don’t want to spend any time with him. The appealing and attractive Stone doesn’t settle in too well either, though she seems game for anything, and up for it. Even Eileen Atkins, as Firth’s frosty aunt Vanessa, can’t light sparks.

A bit of a damp squib, then, and a bit of a dud from Woody Allen. There’s no romcom magic in this moonlight.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Movie Review

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