Well Past "Midnight"

For some reason I skipped over Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris" this summer, perhaps feeling fatigued from all of the Cannes conversations and analysis and feeling in the mood for something far bigger and costlier.
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Whatever the reason, I finally caught up with it yesterday and I'm really glad I did. Obviously Allen has been on a decades-long run of astonishing productivity and somewhat middling (if not severely disappointing) results. 
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Yet with "Midnight in Paris," he's made something more akin to, or rather in reference of, his great works - the big-city romanticism of "Manhattan" combined with the fantastical, time-traveling escapism of "The Purple Rose of Cairo."
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So while admittedly the film is rather more of Allen repeating himself, the result is something that's nevertheless frothy and unremittingly delectable. (Insert French pastry simile here.) 

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Owen Wilson's hack writer character is the ultimate conduit for Allen's mumblings - a frustrated, insecure romantic with a heart for starry-eyed nostalgia, Cole Porter and the desire to live in the past to escape his present. 
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Needless to say, the film finds reason for Gil's (Wilson's) eventual stay in the present, with his sweet, pat life lessons from the past, ultimately finding no new ground in the scheme of Allen's career thematically. 
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But I'll personally grant the 75 year-old writer-director some time to repeat himself when the result is something so positively luminous, agreeable and sweet, especially when viewed in context with the romantic comedy genre as a whole. Personally, I forgot what it was like - thank you, Woody, for reminding me.