Magic in the Moonlight

For over forty years, Woody Allen has been making baldly autobiographical films, with tropes and messages his fans know by heart: there is no God or ultimate justice on Earth; romance and the pleasure deprived from art have the power to divert ones attention from thoughts of mortality; morality means whatever one wishes or can get away with …

In Allen’s better films (Crimes and Misdemeanors or Match Point, for example), the characters and stories are compelling enough to carry the viewer’s attention through Allen’s philosophical minefield; we’re caught up, despite ourselves, in wanting to know: what happens next. In films more slightly and sloppily written (Celebrity, Deconstructing Harry, etc.), the veil between Allen and us is so thin as to be nearly non-existent. We may as well be in a classroom taking notes for an exam we already know the answers to. Magic in the Moonlight comes dangerously close to being in the latter category.

Colin Firth plays Stanley Crawford, a professional magician (and an atheistic stand-in for Allen) in 1920’s France. Led by the challenge of exposing a psychic, Stanley meets young Sophie Baker (Emma Stone), who has been extracting funds from wealthy socialites with her seeming ability to contact the dead. The more Stanley attempts to debunk the demure American Sophie, the more he’s presented with proofs of her abilities — until he begins to doubt his own doubting philosophical worldview.

Magic in the Moonlight is structured like a Noel Coward play (Oscar Wilde and P.G. Wodehouse come to mind, too). It’s a sound structure, a good idea on which to build a story. There is no magic in this moonlight, though. The romance between Stanley Crawford and Sophie Baker is nearly nonexistent.

The film is so mechanically written, so driven to make its philosophical points, it has no room for the sort of subtle artistry and poetry Coward would have given it or a director like David Lean would have granted it. Every character, major and minor, is present for one purpose only: to hammer home Allen’s ideas, in the manner of a 1905 George Bernard Shaw play. It’s Woody Allen playing it safe; that’s a shame because at his age (78), he’s got nothing left to lose.

Sophie Baker’s other romantic interest is a ukulele-playing doofus performed by Hamish Linklater; he does nothing throughout the film but fawn over Sophie and — play the ukulele . The role could have been written to be funny, but it’s not. I would have loved it if this minor character had become a real person in spite of Allen, if he had started intruding on the plot and inadvertently getting in the way of Allen’s hermetic treatise. Allen would have genuinely taken an artistic risk outside of his usual comfort if he’d gone down such a route.

There are small joys to be had in Magic in the Moonlight, as is true of most Woody Allen films. Cinematographer Darius Khondji shot bright, beautiful locals in a painterly manner that please the eye. The actors are all fine in their limited roles, Colin Firth especially. Magic in the Moonlight is a pretty diversion, but not much else.

—Michael R. Neno, 2014 Sep 17