Cinemazlowski 'Magic in the Moonlight' movie review

Sep 5, 2014

Woody Allen turns 79 this year, easily putting him in an age bracket where he could have long since retired. But unlike 84-year-old Clint Eastwood, whose last several films have grown increasingly tedious and uneven, Allen has been enjoying a remarkable career renaissance for the past decade since he finally decided to leave New York City behind and expand his artistic palette to include some of the world’s most glamorous locations, including Barcelona, Paris, London and Rome.

The exhilarating results have also carried him along on the hottest box-office streak of his lengthy career, with “Midnight in Paris” and last year’s “Blue Jasmine” two of his biggest hits ever. His latest film, “Magic in the Moonlight,” hasn’t caught fire with audiences, but with movie buffs trapped in the deadly dull transition period between summer blockbusters and fall prestige pictures, it carries more than enough charm to be worthwhile in addition to engaging viewers in some of Allen’s most personal musings ever on life, death, love and the afterlife.

Not to worry, “Magic” is a long way from a return to Allen’s utterly depressing late-‘70s Ingmar Bergman tribute “Interiors,” which drew critical praise but which the general public found an insufferable bafflement released between his two greatest films, “Annie Hall” and “Manhattan.” Rather, “Magic” is a lighthearted comic and romantic soufflé as it follows the comic yet philosophical battle between an alleged American psychic named Sophie (Emma Stone) and the famous magician Stanley (Colin Firth) who is asked to debunk her seemingly uncanny ability to communicate with the dead.

Stanley is first seen performing in Berlin as his alter ego Chinese illusionist Wei Ling Soo, wowing a crowd in the opening scene before an old magician friend named Howard (Simon McBurney) visits him backstage and asks him to help a family of rich friends. The family has fallen under the spell of Sophie, who travels with her mother to seemingly random places and convinces people along the way that she can communicate with their deceased loved ones via séances.

Since the heir to this family, Brice (Hamish Linklater), has fallen hopelessly in love with her, the family is afraid that Sophie is just a gold-digger out to win the family fortune by pretending to communicate with their dead patriarch. Stanley agrees to re-direct his planned vacation to visit the family with Stanley and attempt to prove that Sophie is a fraud  - but the problem is, she instantly knows so much about him that he’s thrown for a loop.

Add in the fact that Stanley finds her séance techniques to be seamless, and a comic battle of the mind, spirit and heart ensues. The more Sophie baffles him with her impossible knowledge about everyone she meets or conveys seemingly real messages from the Great Beyond, the more Stanley starts to feel his  bedrock atheism and absolute rejection of all things supernatural are crumbling. Oh, and he’s starting to fall for her too.

All this is literally old-fashioned fun, but while the fast-paced banter about love, life, death and the afterlife is amusing on an artistic level, as a Catholic reviewer I must point out that Stanley makes very frequent jabs at belief in God, and despite the intriguing twists that Sophie's charms put on him, the movie's overall attitude towards the spiritual and supernatural is very much in keeping with Allen's openly atheistic worldview. The movie isn't meanspirited about its atheism, but perhaps the fact it tries to be genial and funny makes it more insidious in that regard. Still, there's nothing in the movie that will shake any viewer's faith. 

It’s not hard to peg why “Magic” isn’t clicking with crowds on the broad level that “Jasmine” and “Paris” did, for it is set in 1928 in quaint settings with a very old-school jazzy score, rather than being vibrantly contemporary. But Firth and Stone set off comic sparks that are a joy to behold, Linklater plays his comical doofus for ample laughs and there's the usual barrage of witty one-liners that makes Allen beloved.

Inexplicably rated PG-13 despite practically being G-rated in content aside from its realistic time-period depiction of frequent cigarette smoking, “Magic” is also classy fun for those who wonder if such a thing is possible anymore in today’s comedies. For those looking for good clean fun at the movies, it’s easy to fall under  this film’s spell.