there was Michael Keaton as Tom Baxter / Gil Shepherd!!!!

The dual role of Tom Baxter/Gil Shepherd was originally cast with Michael Keaton, whose work Allen admired and who took a significant cut in salary for the privilege of working with Allen. But Allen eventually felt that, despite a strong performance, Keaton was too contemporary and hard to accept as a character living in the 1930s. After 10 days on the set, Keaton and Allen amicably parted company and Daniels was cast in the dual part of Shepherd /Baxter [text via TCM | Keaton pic via]

not exactly Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly, but still!!!

We are all in love with the past, and never with the present.  There will always be some point in time and history that we’d rather be at than the here and now, no?  Oh, how super kick-a$$ it musta been to live and be in the American 6os, yes?  Who wouldn’t want to experience Beatlemania and watching a man walk on the moon first hand, maybe???!!!  That’s juss one of our idealized wishful time travel dreams, and for Woody Allen, apparently his is the roaring 20s of Paris, France

In his latest European yarn (ever single one of them, even Scoop, have been quality fare), Woodsie goes there (time and space), and his persona, and our guide, is played by the perfectly nebbish Owen Wilson.  He’s a scriptwriter trying to become a novelist, but he’s got writer’s block, a pushy fiancée (Rachel McAdams, reuniting with her Wedding Crashers pal) and ‘pedantic’ Michael Sheen (looks great with a beard) overbreathing knowledge down his neck.   So what’s the solution to all his modern 21st century problems?  Inspiration from his idols, but not from a distance, but directly from them.  You know, hactual hobnobbing with the likes of Hemingway (Corey Stoll), F Scott (Thor’s devilish bro Tom Hiddleston) & Zelda (Alison Pill) Fitzgearld, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Luis Buñuel, Man Ray, Salvador Dali (Adrien Brody), Alice B. Toklas, bullfighter Juan Belmonte, Cole Porter, Joséphine Baker, Djuna Barnes, T.S. Eliot, Henri Matisse and MORE!!!!

There’s no science involved in this fiction here, just sum magical jumping back 90 years into the past, without worrying about how that all works, or altering future BS worries, except for Owen’s own love interests (who wouldn’t fall for Marion Cotillard???)!  That’s right, Woody jumps into the time travelling game, and in all honesty, it’s one of the better films of the past couple of decades to do so, but with the help of a 1920 Peugeot Landaulet instead of a DeLorean.  88kmph?

If we could build a time machine and change one thing about this movie, we would somehow give the gifted Gad Elmaleh a little bit more to do.  He’s one funny fellow, and would hactually make a perfect French version of the Woodman.  We smell a Untitled French Woody Allen Film in here somewhere!

Something Is Rotten In Tomatoes: some say Paris is Woody’s best in decades.  those some peoples are entitled to their opinion (and they may not even be wrong), but have these and you people seen Casandra’s Dream, at least more than once????  even our initial review is wrong.  SH$T STILL HAUNTS US JUSS THINKING ABOUT IT!!!!  A-MAZINGGGGGGGGGG!

Verdictgo: enjoyable to the (sor)bon(n)e, so… Breast In Show

Paris je tames audiences currently in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…