Review of Magic in the Moonlight (2014) by Craig T — 07 Jan 2015

Film. Following on from Oscar winning Blue Jasmine, Allen once again switches gears.

Stepping back to the style of his lighter early 21st century films, this 1920-era film sees Colin Firth playing a magician and debunker of the paranormal, attempting to expose a supposed psychic, played by Emma Stone.

Despite his prolific work rate, Allen considers himself to be lazy and add he gets older, this becomes more apparent. A number of lines here fall flat and would likely have been rejected in earlier films.

There are also echos from scenes from earlier films and the themes are traditional Allen fare, though these have always been par for the course.

Whilst watching there seemed to be a number of inexplicable character reactions, which felt unnatural and forced to move the plot forward.

However, looking back this seems to be a result of the casting, which almost inexplicably and uncharacteristically, seems to have been horribly misjudged.

Firth gives a solid preformance, for the most part but in the aforementioned scenes he seems to go off the rails.

Stone, unfortunately, is far more uneven. There are flashes of her trademark charm, but often seems as if she just going through the motions and her psychic episodes are cartoonishly bad, which mostly jars with the overall tone.

But by far the biggest issue is that there is no sexual tension between the two leads in the slightest. Despite the movie telling us they are attracted to each other, there is absolutely no sense that is true. This inevitably undermines the whole theme if the movie that love is magic.

Much has been made of the age difference between Firth and Stone and this evidently plays a part. Had either Jesse Eisenberg been cast in the Firth role, or Cate Blanchett taken the Stone role, then the whole thing would probably have felt more natural.

Unfortunately, this is a pretty weak film that misuses a great leading duo, both to the detriment of the film and it's underlying theme.

Oh well, there's always next year.